Emergency no-bid repairs for the Walt Whitman Bridge were
approved Thursday by the Delaware River Port Authority board after holes were
found in the bridge's steelwork, including one in a support beam that a worker
described as big enough to "put a hard hat in."
The move, which will cost about $2.7 million, came just
months after completion of a three-year, $140 million redecking of the
57-year-old bridge between South Jersey and South Philadelphia.
Rusted gusset plates below the new bridge deck were
discovered in June during a routine biennial inspection, and emergency repairs
at that time forced a six-week ban on heavy trucks on the bridge. The bill for
those repairs was $1.5 million.
The board voted Thursday to hire the current contractor,
American Bridge Co. of Coraopolis, Pa., to make the new repairs rather than
putting the project out to bid, in an effort to save time and money.
Failure of the plates would not have led to a bridge
collapse but would have damaged other components and required more extensive
and expensive repairs, DRPA chief executive John Hanson said.
"I want to assure you and the public there is no
danger of a bridge failure," Hanson told the board Thursday. "It's
not a safety issue for our commuters."
He said the worst deterioration had been fixed, and DRPA
engineers had a schedule for replacing the remaining gusset plates over the
next year, based on the extent of decay.
Bridge worker Charles J. Roberts, a steward for
Ironworkers Local 401, urged the board to authorize immediate repairs rather
than go through the usual bidding process. The ironworkers are employed by
American Bridge to do the work on the Walt Whitman Bridge.
"This is the worst decay I've ever seen," said
Roberts, who said he had been doing bridge work for 18 years. "I saw a
15-inch hole in a load-bearing beam . . . that you could put a hard hat in. To
me, that's scary.
"These repairs need to be done."
The Ironworkers are well represented on the DRPA board.
Richard Sweeney and Al Frattali, two New Jersey representatives on the board,
are officials in the Ironworkers union. Sweeney is the brother of State Senate
President Stephen Sweeney, who is also an Ironworkers union official.
DRPA officials praised the work done so far by American
Bridge and the Ironworkers, and argued it would be cheaper and faster to have
them continue with the new repairs.
"We can save money for the commuters by moving
forward . . . without putting it out to bid," said Philadelphia lawyer
William Sasso, who chairs the board's operations and maintenance committee.
"I don't want to be thinking about this at night. I think we should move
forward."
The repairs are expect to be finished early next year.
In other business Thursday, the DRPA board:
Lifted the veil of secrecy from the political
contributions made by DRPA vendors and would-be vendors. The board approved a
proposal by board member Eugene DePasquale, the Pennsylvania auditor general,
to grant public access to contribution reports. In 2012, the board had blocked
public viewing of the reports.
Learned it would take about six weeks to get results of a
traffic study that could mean discounts for regular users of the DRPA's four
toll bridges: the Walt Whitman, Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, and Commodore Barry.
Supported a 12-week study to examine the feasibility of
reopening the PATCO "ghost station" at Franklin Square, beneath Old
City. The station, built in 1936, open intermittently and last used in 1979,
lies beneath refurbished Franklin Square at Sixth and Race Streets.
Source: Philly.com
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