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HNTB+MVVA

Concept design for the winning entry in the 2010 ARC International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition by HNTB with Michael Van Valkenburgh & Associates.

ARC: Animal Road Crossings

What is ARC?

ARC is an interdisciplinary partnership working to facilitate new thinking, new methods, new materials and new solutions for wildlife crossing structures. Our goal is to ensure safe passage for both humans and animals on and across our roads. Situated at the intersection of science and design, we are a forum for creative collaborations and surprising synergies.

Paula MacKay, WTI

Wildlife-vehicle collisions pose a significant risk to a wide range of wildlife species and their populations throughout North America.

ARC: Animal Road Crossings

New Thinking

A growing threat to people and to animals, collisions between wildlife and vehicles have been increased by 50 percent in the last 15 years. These accidents now cost Americans $8 billion every year.

ARC engages new thinking to design crossing structures that reconnect landscapes, safeguarding our wildlife populations, their habitats and our ecosystems. The right solution will reduce the number of collisions to save human and animal lives, at a lower cost, improving highway safety for all.

HNTB+MVVA

Wildlife crossings offer new opportunities for innovative research and educational outreach, such as infrared web-cameras that feed real-time visual data to handheld applications for  scientists and the public alike.

ARC: Animal Road Crossings

New Methods

Integrating science and design, ARC is changing the way people and animals see and understand our landscapes. We use interdisciplinary collaboration and international cooperation to address a continental problem at local sites and scales.

Janet Rosenberg & Associates

“An animal's world is vision, sound, touch, smell. It's not about language. You have to get into the sensory world in order to understand them.” – Temple Grandin

ARC: Animal Road Crossings

New Materials

Dynamic conditions demand flexible solutions and responsive materials. ARC explores new, sustainable infrastructure material strategies to respond to people, animals, and their shared environments.

Yves LeBlanc

Animals need several types of structures to ensure safe passage across roadways. Underpasses, like this example in Québec, are the more common type of crossing structure while overpasses are important habitat linkages in other locations.

ARC: Animal Road Crossings

New Solutions

ARC works to implement creative solutions for wildlife crossing infrastructure to benefit humans and animals. Our success depends on partners and projects across North America.

Join us, and become part of the solution.

question-what-is-ARC
What Is ARC
How can design
save wildlife and
wild places?
question-new-thinking
New Thinking
Why
are animals
dying on
our roads?
New Methods
What can transform a road into a place?
question-new-methods
New Materials
Can exploring
new materials
change how we
engineer our
highways?
question-new-materials
question-new-solutions
New Solutions
What’s been done
about roadkill,
and why isn’t it
enough?
question-who-is-arc
Who Is ARC
Together,
we are working
to create
safe passages.
"Deer-Car-Collision Course at Seventy-Five Miles Per Hour" It came as an unpleasant surprise to me that when air bags deploy, there is so much smoke and chemical off gassing that you become blinded and trapped in your car choking. I learned firsthand of this fact driving between Helena and Bozeman last fall on Interstate 90, where the speed limit is 75. I was driving the speed limit on my way home from WELC’s Helena office when two deer jumped out of the median into the left hand lane. It was dusk, and given my line of work as a road ecologist, I am usually hyper aware of watching for wildlife and slowing down to increase my reaction time in case the worst occurs. But, I was doing neither of these things  - I mean, who hits wildlife on an interstate going 75 miles per hour?"
Monique DiGiorgio
Bozeman, MT
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Featured News

A Zest for Bridges:   2012 Award of Excellence Winner Theodore Zoli
Photo credit: Eric Millette. A Zest for Bridges: 2012 Award of Excellence Winner Theodore Zoli Zoli designed the Mary Avenue Bridge in Cupertino, Calif., to connect bisected communities.
April 16, 2012
A Zest for Bridges: 2012 Award of Excellence Winner Theodore Zoli
Engineering News-Record

One recent Sunday afternoon while he was biking in New York City's Central Park, Theodore Zoli's cell phone rang. It was a call from James Ray, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers senior researcher with the Engineering Research and Development Center in Biloxi, Miss. Troops in Afghanistan were concerned about a bridge that had been damaged by fire. Could they safely cross it?

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Featured Video

Bear 71
Bear 71
Leanne Allison and Jeremy Mendes

Bear 71 is a web documentary that explores the connections between the human and animal world, and the far-ranging effects that human settlements, roads and railways have on wildlife. This webdoc allows viewers/users to follow the movements of a female grizzly bear and other wild inhabitants through Banff National Park in Canada by scrolling through and activating the site's webcams.

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Recommended Reading

Theodore Zoli, Genius Bridge Engineer
Photo credit: Courtesy of John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
March 2, 2011
Theodore Zoli, Genius Bridge Engineer
Tom Chiarella
Esquire

“Think about short bridges. Limited-use bridges. Rural bridges. Why should we build them to last 100, 150 years? What if we could build a bridge that would last twenty years, that would rot safely and employ a controlled collapse? A bridge that could be replaced in a week instead of a year? Wouldn't it make sense to do less instead of more?”

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