JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Ever so slowly, the colossal machine
glided across the water, with a tiny, but mighty tugboat pushing it toward the
famous skyline of Lower Manhattan.
Watch a video of the The Left Coast Lifter's arrival here...
The Left Coast Lifter, the giant floating crane that will
help build the new Tappan Zee Bridge, arrived in New York Harbor on Thursday
and settled into a Jersey City port, where it will stay for next several months
before it’s brought up the Hudson River.
Its official name is the Left Coast Lifter — a nod to its
first job on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project — but Tappan Zee
project officials have been calling it the I Lift New York super crane.
“The crane is arriving just in time for Super Bowl Sunday,”
Brian Conybeare, special adviser to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said during a news
conference at the edge of Port Jersey. “It is bigger than a football field and
its boom is longer than a football field as well.”
Thursday marked the last leg of the crane’s 6,000-mile
voyage that began more than a month ago in California and included a trip
through the Panama Canal. The crane was folded down and received special
protections for the journey.
“We are very excited to have the crane here on time and with
no incident,” said Carla Julian, spokeswoman for Tappan Zee Constructors, the
consortium designing and building the new Tappan Zee and the crane’s owner.
“The reason we are bringing it up a little early is so we can ensure it’s ready
when we are ready to go to work with it in the spring.”
The one-of-a-kind machine will help TZC crews complete
construction tasks more quickly.
The crane’s incredible size and strength — it can lift 12
times the weight of the Statue of Liberty — will be used to put sections of the
new Tappan Zee into place. It will also assist with tearing down the existing
Tappan Zee in 2016.
Tappan Zee project officials hosted a media event in Jersey
City to welcome the crane to the East Coast.
“I’d like to say it got a warm welcome, but it’s pretty cold
out here,” Conybeare said Thursday morning, when temperatures lingered in the
teens.
Along the waterfront at the end of Port Jersey Boulevard,
reporters gathered in the bitter cold to get the first glimpse of the crane as
it traveled through New York Harbor. About 9:15, the outline of the barge and
crane appeared in the sun-sparkled water under the Verranzzo-Narrows Bridge,
plodding along with the help of a tugboat team from Seattle.
About an hour later, a tugboat crew from Weeks Marine took
over to guide the crane to the Weeks facility nearby, where it will stay until
the spring. Weeks Marine has done the dredging of the Hudson River for the
project, and has numerous cranes at the work site.
Just after noon, the crane finally neared the shore. The
spectacle quietly floated by against the grand backdrop of the Statue of
Liberty and Freedom Tower.
Source: IOHD.com
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