City: Atlanta
State: Georgia
Owner: Georgia Department of Transportation
General Contractor: Shepherd Construction/E.R. Snell Contracting

Project Description:
Anyone who lives in Atlanta, or has perhaps passed through the city on their way to Florida, is aware of the traffic problems and demands for additional capacity along Interstate 75.  In the mid 90’s, the Georgia Department of Transportation developed a plan for easing traffic problems around one of the city’s busiest interchanges where I-75 and I-285 intersect on the northwest side of the city.  This project involved major improvements and changes to the existing interchange, including the widening of existing traffic lanes, additional bridges and frontage roads, and upgrading and expanding the exit and entrance ramps to and from the various roadways in the area.  In order to achieve these modifications, numerous and various types of retaining walls were going to be required, including eight (8) permanent anchor walls.

Schnabel was contracted to design and build all the permanent tieback and soil nail walls on the project.  The tieback walls were constructed by conventional methods of using concrete faced steel soldier beams with temporary wood lagging and earth tiebacks.  The Georgia Department of Transportation accepted a design alternate proposed by Schnabel to use a soil nail wall in place of one of the originally proposed tieback walls at a location where a significant amount of rock was present.  The proposed soil nail wall received a permanent shotcrete facing which was also installed by Schnabel’s crews.

Schnabel’s excellent work on this extensive project has helped to improve traffic problems at this busy intersection and has proven to be a great benefit to the travelling public in this area.