STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- Staten Islanders don't have to go far
to see an engineering marvel in progress and the first of its kind ever
attempted.
Raising the road bed of the Bayonne Bridge 64 feet while
traffic continuously flows across the span is unprecedented in the annals of
engineering, and a unique set of circumstances starting with the bridge's
design more than 80 years ago have made this project possible, said Joann
Papageorgis, a program director with the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey.
"This is going to be an amazing project-- never been
done before have they built a deck over an existing bridge while keeping the
bridge open to traffic," she said.
FACTS AND FIGURES
Currently the span has the lowest navigational clearance of
any bridge in the area and one of the lowest in the country at 151 feet, and
raising it to 215 feet above the Kill van Kull will put it more in line with
the average-- about 290 feet nationally-- or closer to its immediate neighbor
the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which sits about 217 feet above the water
depending on the tide.
Upon completion the bridge will include four 12-foot wide
lanes-- two in each direction-- a 12-foot wide pedestrian/biking path, nearly
5-foot wide shoulders on each side and the possibility of a future light rail.
Port Authority outlines plans for raising Staten Island's
Bayonne Bridge
The new walkway will not have stairs but a ramp so
bicyclists could ride across, and it will be on the east side of the bridge as
opposed to the recently removed walkway on the west. At some point in the
future when officials decide on a transit corridor on the Island, the west side
of the bridge will be available for a light rail option.
"With the clearance, we also get a brand new infrastructure
that hopefully will connect New York and New Jersey for the next 100
years," Ms. Papageorgis said of the 100-year life expectancy of the
revamped span.
Also all the water runoff from the bridge will be channeled
and collected in a detention pond on the Port Authority's Staten Island
property and slowly released into the city's collection system.
"It will be the only bridge in the region where all
water runoff from the bridge will be treated before it is released," she
added.
The span crosses the busiest shipping channel on the East
Coast of the United States, which sees 30 percent of shipping traffic from
Maine to Florida navigate under it and supports 280,000 related jobs, Ms.
Papageorgis said.
Of the $1.29 billion invested in this project, more than
$380 million will be in wages. The ports account for about $36.1 billion in
annual revenue.
PANAMA CONNECTION
Although the
"Raise the Roadway" project was not specifically coordinated with
widening the Panama Canal officials at the Port Authority knew that project
would allow new, larger "super container ships" access to America's
ports.
"If you go to the Panama Canal now and you see the
existing ships, sometimes they have about a couple inches on either side for
clearance," Ms. Papageorgis said. "It's very, very tight; they're
just squeezing through. So the issue is the width, but as they become wider and
longer, they also become bigger and taller."
To stay competitive the raising was advanced along with the
Army Corps of Engineers dredging of the New York Harbor, and other massive
improvement projects at many of America's ports.
LUCKY BREAKS
Originally the Panama Canal project was scheduled to
conclude in 2014, but that date was pushed back to 2015, which will now
coincide with the expected fall 2015 removal of the old road bed. The dates
will almost match up to allow the necessary clearance.
At that point traffic will be traveling on half of the
completed bridge-- one lane in each direction-- 215 feet above the Kill van
Kull. The new roadway, medians, and walkway are expected to be completed in the
second quarter of 2017.
"There is a key interim milestone in the fourth quarter
of 2015 when half the bridge will be built at the higher elevation, such that
we can switch traffic up there and remove the lower existing deck, which is a
navigational obstruction," said Dennis Stabile, project manager for the
Bayonne Bridge. "That coincides with the date of when the Panama Canal
expansion is expected to be completed, so that works out well."
The Bayonne Bridge is the only arched bridge designed by
Othmar H. Ammann, who designed many suspension bridges familiar to Staten
Islanders such as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge; George Washington Bridge;
Throgs Neck Bridge; Bronx-Whitestone Bridge; Triborough Bridge and the Walt
Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia.
This arched design is what allows the Port Authority to
raise the road bed, Ms. Papageorgis said.
"Had this not been an arch we wouldn't been able to
raise the deck because an arch is a very strong structural member," Ms.
Papageorgis said. "So it was almost destiny that he knew one day that we
would do this because if this were like his other (suspension) bridges we would
never have been able to do this. It's just kind of interesting that this was
his only arch, and this is the one bridge that we needed to raise the roadway
for."
With Staten Island and Bayonne built up around the bridge's
bases, constructing a new span would require property taking and a whole host
of other hurdles to cross.
LOCAL IMPACT
Half of the toll booths on the Staten Island side have been
removed, and the approaching section of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Expressway
have been removed.
The Richmond Terrace exit 13-- the last exit in New York on
the expressway-- has been closed and will remain closed until the fall 2015.
Intersections along the detour have been re-striped to improve the traffic
flow.
Weekday overnight closures of the bridge began Wednesday and
will run to February, keeping the span opened to traffic on the weekends and on
holidays. There will also be eight full weekend closures per year during the
project, and they will be announced prior to the dates needed.
The closures are necessary so workers can lift the massive
steel and concrete sections in place above the bridge.
"We're never lifting up and over an active travel
lane," Ms. Papageorgis said. "But we're never lifting up and over
anyone's property either."
The traffic impact from the closures and the single lane in
each direction for the next three years should be minimal since the Bayonne
Bridge has the lowest volume of any Port Authority crossing with 350 vehicles
per hour during peak travel times and a total of about 350 vehicles crossing at
night, Stabile said.
Portable sound barriers have been put in place around work
areas to mitigate some of the construction noise, and the contractor measures
noise levels with meters. If the noise exceeds city standards they are
instructed to stop the work "within minutes" and they "restart
the work in an alternate way" or provide additional "noise
abatement," Stabile explained.
Customer service offices should be completed in about a
month next to the Bayonne Bridge administration building at Trantor Place and
John Street where neighbors could walk in and get information or register
complaints about any aspect of the construction process.
Residents could also call 1-855-265-5482 for general
information or noise complaints, and to receive regular updates and real-time
alerts folks can sign up at www.paalerts.com.
Source: SILive.com
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