The Metropolitan Expressway is an urban expressway network built over the sea, rivers and other places where it is prone to damage or close to buildings and other structures, resulting in 48,800 repairs every year. Therefore, it requires renewal work in very narrow spaces and special technology.
In the Higashi-Shinagawa Pier Section and the Samezu Reclamation Area Project, the Expressway Route 1 (Haneda line) and the Tokyo Monorail run in close proximity of the sites, so construction is performed in very narrow spaces.
Bridge demolition work in an 18 m wide space sandwiched between the left and right sides of the bridge. If we tried to remove it with one crane, we would have to use a bigger crane which would not fit in the space, but two cranes working together smoothly removed the bridge.
With ordinary construction methods, there is a concern of affecting nearby structures, so we have adopted a water jet combined jacking method using a hydraulic pile extractor that enables the installation of steel pipe sheet piles even in narrow spaces.
In the Higashi-Shinagawa section, the old Oi JCT was replaced using a 1250-ton crane. The bridge will be replaced all at once in two and a half hours at night when the monorail is not running.
