Best of 2006 Awards
Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Bergenline Avenue and Weehawken Tunnel
AWARD OF MERIT: Mass Transit
 A $140 million effort to build the Bergenline Avenue Station and Weehawken Tunnel that opened in February was the one of the last – and most difficult – pieces of a seven-station, $1.2 billion expansion that takes New Jersey Transit’s Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Transit system north into Bergen County. The light rail first came online with a $1.3 billion, 16-station system in Jersey City, Bayonne, and Hoboken in 2002.
Located 160 ft. below ground, the new 300-ft.-long Bergenline Station in Union City is the system’s first underground stop. Riders access it via three high-speed elevators from a landscaped, at-grade pedestrian plaza that links to bus service.
“I thought its design was very good,” said one of the judges. “It had some innovative construction techniques.”
The project team extended the line from Weehawken’s Hudson River waterfront to Union City, which sits on the high cliffs of New Jersey’s Palisades, via a 4,156- ft.-long former railroad tunnel that had been out of use since 2002. Built right into the cliff side during the 1880s, the Weehawken tunnel wasn’t big enough for its new role, forcing the project team to widen it by 40 ft. and increase its height by 12 ft. using smooth-wall blast techniques.
The new 65-ft. width and 34-ft. height allowed the team to install the light rail system’s two-track alignment. The team also removed more than 100 years of built-up soot from the tunnel surface, while ensuring that it did not spread contamination into the surrounding environment.
Crews also blasted through rock to create a 40-ft.-diameter and 160-ft.-deep shaft for vertical tunnel access and ventilation stacks serving the underground station and tunnel. With the elevator pit just 3 ft. from an existing, in-service electric duct bank in the tunnel, the team carefully monitored blasts to ensure continuous electrical service to the work areas below.
With exposed and unsupported rock lining about 70 percent of the old tunnel, the team had to add new concrete walls to decrease the risk of spalling, especially in the case of fire. It created a special mix with polypropylene fibers to form cast-in-place concrete walls in the station and in areas that did not already have the tunnel’s original brick arch and masonry sidewalls.
The team created yet another mix for the drainage and waterproofing system. And rather than conventional formed concrete, it used shotcrete, a high-powered spray application of concrete, for the liner at station-to-tunnel transitions and for the arched lining at the river portal.
Then-U.S. Rep. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a trained architect who is now a U.S. Senator, contributed to the station design in Union City, where he started his political career.
Key Players
Owner: New Jersey Transit
Engineer-Designer: Parsons Brinckerhoff
Architect: FXFowle Architects
Environmental Engineer: BEM Systems
Construction Manager: Washington Group International
Contractor Joint Venture: Frontier Kemper Constructors; Benton und Monierbau Gesellschaft; J.F. Shea Construction
Mechanical-Plumbing Subcontractor: A&A Industrial Piping
Electrical: MCI Electric
Elevator Subcontractor: Liberty Elevator |
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