Reconstruction of the Jakai Roundabout in Klaipėda, Stage I

During reconstruction of the Jakai roundabout, a four-lane overpass, the longest in Lithuania – 610-metres – was built. It was awarded a gold medal at the contest Product of the Year 2010. The width of the overpass ranges from 20 to 30.5 metres. The span structure of the overpass is a continuous monolithic reinforced hollow-core span structure with pretensioned cables on reinforced concrete bearings. The assembly of the span structure proceeded in several stages since technologically it is not possible to immediately pretension 610-metre long cables each comprised of 22 plies. Modern, specially adapted equipment was used for pretensioning. During the first stage of reconstruction a tunnel-type viaduct was renewed, the lighting was installed on the overpass, the engineering networks were reconstructed. The Jakai roundabout is an important part of the main road Vilnius-Kaunas-Klaipėda connecting as many as six roads: Kaunas-Klaipėda, Klaipėda-Liepaja, Kaunas-Jurbarkas-Klaipėda, Jakai-Dovilai, Tilžės Street in Klaipėda and Klaipėda-Kaunas. A large number of roads leads to large traffic volumes at the Jakai roundabout: as many as 25.000 vehicles cross the roundabout per 24 hours, as compared to 3-6.000 vehicles crossing the other roundabouts of the country. Reconstruction of the Jakai roundabout will also benefit the environment as it will be possible to go from/to Klaipėda without entering the roundabout; this will lead to a reduced number of braking by the vehicles and, thus, to the reduced amount of gas emissions into the environment.