N.Y.C. Expands Scope on Williamsburg Bridge Job

Just as it neared the finish line, the project team on the tail end of the 20-year rehabilitation effort gets a new order. Also, a new rail link is on the way for North Jersey commuters.

Williamsburg Bridge Rehab Grows

Though it was originally slated to wrap up this spring, a two-decade-long rehabilitation program for the Williamsburg Bridge will continue through 2008, according to the New York City Department of Transportation. The bridge links Brooklyn and Manhattan via eight traffic lanes and two subway train tracks.

Rather than complete the comprehensive structural makeover of the century-old 7,308-ft-long structure in June as originally scheduled, the agency has extended Contract 8 – the last of the program’s major rehabilitation packages – to address tasks that were not part of the original scope of work. That decision will keep Parsons Transportation Group of New York as designer, Koch Skanska of Carteret, N.J., as contractor, and other consultants on the job for another 18 months.

“N.Y.C. DOT wanted to take advantage of the experience and resources that are already in place,” says Craig Chin, an agency spokesman.

Begun in 2003, Contract 8 involved major upgrades to the main towers, including replacing bearings and installing custom-cut steel plates to add strength and compensate for a century’s worth of stress that had bent the tower tops in toward the bridge center.

Now, the department has added several major assignments to Contract 8, including seismic repair and strengthening of intermediate tower structural steel column bases. Other new tasks involve encasing existing granite piers with reinforced concrete and a new granite exterior, as well as replacing steel multi-roller bearings at two locations in the towers. 

“The bearings were no longer rolling as required and radiographic examination revealed stress cracking of upper and lower castings,” Chin says.

In other new work, the team will install movable barriers, a barrier transfer machine and facility, and lane control signs to manage traffic flow on the bridge’s south inner roadway during weekday morning rush hours. It also will repair various bridge members.

The city transportation agency estimates that materials and labor for these additional tasks will cost $80.3 million, bringing Contract 8’s total price tag to about $303 million. 

Koch Skanska finished Contract 8’s biggest single task – sandblasting and repainting the two 2,800-ft long steel stiffening trusses built tight to the roadway – during a marathon, 167-day effort in summer 2003 that aimed to minimize lane closures and avoid a $50,000-per-day liquidated damage penalty.  

Although minimizing disruptions to the Williamsburg Bridge’s daily volume of 100,000 vehicles and 110,000 subway passengers has been a priority since the rehabilitation program began in 1987, Chin says that some lane closures will be required during replacement of the intermediate tower bearings. 

N.J. Rail Plan Gets Go Ahead

New Jersey Transit has announced plans to construct a new passenger rail link between downtown Hackensack and the Main Line Station in Hawthorne, N.J.

Construction on the $156 million Passaic-Bergen rail service will begin in 2008, and transit officials say they hope to have the line open for business in 2010. The line will include a park-and-ride facility and up to nine stations to allow for convenient transfers between Main Line and Passaic-Bergen trains in Hawthorne, as well as connections to the Bergen County and Pascack Valley lines.

The new rail service is being designed by Transit Link Consultants, a joint venture of the Newark office of PB and the Bloomfield, N.J., office of SYSTRA Consulting. The new facilities are expected to alleviate traffic congestion along Route 4, Interstate 80, and the Garden State Parkway near the line. The proposed alignment of the system begins in Hawthorne and travels south and southeast through Paterson, Elmwood Park, Saddle Brook, Rochelle Park, Maywood, and Hackensack. N.J. Transit officials are projecting that about 1,800 riders per day will use the new line.

Randall’s Island to Add Sports Hub

A $127 million project is slated to start next year to build dozens of sports fields on New York City’s Randall’s Island.

The Randall’s Island Sports Foundation recently tapped New York-based Levien & Co. as project manager for the effort, which calls for construction of 64 state-of-the-art athletic fields, attendant roadways, parking, and pedestrian pathways on 300 acres of park space on the island. Levien will also oversee infrastructure upgrades required to build and sustain the complex.

The project evolved from a partnership between the nonprofit sports foundation and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. In collaboration with schools and community organizations, the foundation has created Randall’s Island Kids, a program of sports and environmental education activities that serves more than 5,000 children a year, many who are from nearby East Harlem and the South Bronx.

As the program grew, the foundation hired two New York-based firms, M. Paul Friedberg & Partners and Ricardo Zurita Architecture + Planning, to devise a master plan for the sports complex. The vision calls for the construction of a world-class track and field facility, as well as a 27-acre “aquatic entertainment” complex. 

Driscoll Bridge Moves Forward

A major rehabilitation is advancing on one of the oldest sections of New Jersey’s Driscoll Bridge, which spans the Raritan River in Middlesex County, carrying nearly 80 million vehicles on the Garden State Parkway per year.

Under a $100 million contract awarded last September by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to Conti Enterprises of South Plainfield, N.J., the work will take place in three phases. The first stages of the rehabilitation finished this spring, and the overall project is slated to finish in May 2009.

The project will consist of deck replacement on the part of the bridge that once carried both directions of traffic; modification and rehabilitation of the superstructure; realignment of the approaches to place all northbound traffic onto the rehabilitated bridge; construction of sign structures; installation of roadway lighting and ITS facilities; and incidental work. The project team will maintain seven lanes of traffic northbound across the bridge.

The southbound lanes already run on a new span that opened in 2006. Upon completion of all work, the bridge will have 15 travel lanes and six shoulder lanes.

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