Marine Parkway Lift Bridge

Cost: $90 million

Development Team

Owner: MTA Bridges and Tunnels, NYC
Designer: Hardesty & Hanover, NYC
Construction Manager: Parsons Transportation Group, NYC
General Contractor: KiSKA Construction Corp., Whitestone, N.Y.
Painting Contractor: L&L Painting Co., Hicksville, N.Y.
Electrical Contractor: D.L. Blaine, Brooklyn, N.Y.

The Marine Parkway (now The Marine Parkway Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge) was originally built in 1937, connecting the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens to Brooklyn and vastly improving public access to Rockaway's beaches.

In the late 1990s Manhattan-based Hardesty & Hanover LPP, consulting engineers, began a deck replacement study for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Bridge and Tunnel division. Following the study, Hardesty & Hanover designed a reconstruction of the vertical lift bridge that included deck replacement and widening of the three-quarter-mile-long four-lane bridge, as well as substantial strengthening and replacement of the truss members to accommodate the widened structure and bring it up to current standards.

In 1998 the contact was awarded to Kiska Construction Corp. of Whitestone, N.Y., and on May 10, 2002. Gov. George Paktaki cut the ribbon on the newly reconstructed bridge.

The widening was accomplished by relocating the single sidewalk on the west side of the bridge outboard of the trusses. Since the truss geometry only allowed for shifting to the west, the spans became eccentrically loaded. Using lightweight materials throughout made the redesign workable.

The sidewalk deck consisted of a lightweight stiffened steel plate with an epoxy overlay. The parapet on the east fascia was fabricated from steel plate while the median barrier and median and west barriers were extruded aluminum, as was the sidewalk railing.

The new deck on the deck truss spans is lightweight concrete deck precast on galvanized steel stringers. Keeping the new deck weight to a minimum allowed the existing trusses to remain in service. No strengthening of the through-trusses was required.

One of the project goals was to increase live load capacity of the bridge to HS-20. Since extra weight was added to the west side of the span, the west deck trusses required substantial strengthening, while the east deck trusses required strengthening primarily to deal with deterioration. Fifty percent of the 362 west deck truss members need to be repaired or replaced.

Truss repairs were done by bolting plates and angles to the truss members during periods when the deck was removed to reduce dead load. Some of the members of the deck truss spans, which had relatively thin cover plates and wider rivet spacing, were found to have significantly more bowing between rivets and more rust than other members. These members were replaced, rather than repaired.

To account for the center-of-gravity shift that came with the widening, the lift span counterweights were modified to shift weight from their east to their west ends. The span balance for each component removed or installed was tabulated and adjusted on a daily basis.

Other work on the bridge included lead paint abatement and repainting of the entire structure; seismic upgrade; substantial electrical work involved in the span operation and other bridge systems; and decorative lighting for the lift span towers.