Moving On

Bridge and Tunnel Construction Exploding With Major Projects

by Leonard Felson

An “unprecedented” amount of work in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut should keep the bridge and tunnel sector booming for several years.

Industry officials call it the perfect storm: billions of dollars in major bridge and tunnel construction projects are moving forward in and around New York City at an unprecedented pace.

New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Capital Construction Co. unit, is handling five major subway projects including the $6.34 billion East Side Access program, which will bring Long Island Railroad trains for the first time into Grand Central Station and Manhattan’s West Side; $3.8 billion to build a new East Side subway line on Second Avenue from 63rd Street to 96th Street; a $2 billion extension of the No. 7 subway line; $750 million to build a new Fulton Transit Center, replacing a maze of tunnels and stairways and improve access to nine subway lines; and a new $400 million South Ferry Terminal, which will replace a single track loop with a two-track station.

Across the Hudson River, New Jersey Transit is moving forward on a $7.4 billion project called the Trans-Hudson Express project, also known as THE Tunnel, which will create two new single-track tubes on a 4.5-mi. alignment between New Jersey and a new bi-level station at 34th Street in Manhattan.

Above ground, several bridge projects also are in the works. The Trans-Hudson Express tunnel project alone is spawning a needed upgrade of an aging 961-ft. Portal Bridge across the Hackensack River, considered essential for the tunnel project’s success, which will help streamline the Northeast Corridor line’s crowded tracks. In addition, the New Jersey Department of Transportation has moved into its second year of a $400 million replacement of the Route 52 Causeway between Summers Point and Ocean City has begun.

New York State’s Department of Transportation is planning a more than $500 million replacement of the Kosciuszko Bridge, which connects Brooklyn and Queens as part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, with a draft environmental impact statement completed in June; and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is planning the replacement of the Goethals Bridge, which spans the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and New Jersey.

Meanwhile, the New York City Department of Transportation in September completed its $85 million replacement of the 145th St. Bridge, which saw the complete reconstruction of the eight-span, 4-lane structure that covers 3.6 miles over the Harlem River and the Metro-North Railroad.

Even in Connecticut, that state’s Department of Transportation is working on a new package to re-bid the $400 million replacement of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge across I-95 in New Haven, a 7.3-mi. span across the Quinnipiac River, otherwise known as the Q Bridge. The new bidding process comes after ConnDOT received no bidders last December on the 10-lane proposed structure.

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“The number of projects out there is unprecedented in terms of size, and a number of these are multibillion dollar projects,” says Huge Caspe, national director of tunnel practice with New York-based HNTB Corp., an engineering, planning, architectural and construction firm. “ If Boston was the center of tunneling with the Big Dig, the Boston Harbor cleanup and other transit projects over the last 15 years, the center of gravity has certainly shifted to New York with the litany of projects underway or in the planning stages,” says Caspe, who’s based in Boston.

Says Luis Tormenta, CEO of Syosset, N.Y.-based LiRo Group, a program construction management, engineering, architectural and environmental services firm: “You almost have a perfect storm of projects when you look at the amount of activity in the New York region.”

“Everything is a major, major infrastructure project right here in our own backyard for our best clients. You couldn’t ask for better things to line up. It really is unprecedented,” says Richard Cavallaro, executive vice president of Skanska USA Civil’s Northeast region.

The volume of bridge and tunnel projects in the works on the pipeline isn’t the only major trend that makes this era so exceptional, industry and transportation officials say. With advanced technologies both on bridges and in tunneling techniques projects are also getting more sophisticated. With long time frames and high price tags, owners also are putting a premium on speed without sacrificing safety to get jobs done on budget and on time, all of which industry and public officials say is forcing contractors, engineers and architects to approach projects in ways they never have before.

As a result, says Tormenta, “one of the most visible changes is the growing number of firms forming more unique, well-defined joint venture teams, as they try to respond to the needs of higher, more complex projects,” says Tormenta.

As projects call for more complicated technologies and as the number of projects in the region increase, he says, “we’re finding more and more firms looking at establishing more sophisticated alliances with teams in other firms that have specialties of expertise to respond to all the needs clients have. There’s so much work in New York that we have to team up,” says Tormenta.

Adding to the projects already funded, engineers, architects, contractors and transit officials are also renewing discussions about the safety of existing bridges and new bridges either in design or under construction in the wake of last August’s I-35 West bridge collapse over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.

“The biggest question coming out of agencies that own bridges and tunnels is whether our current methods of evaluation are still what they should be in light of Minneapolis. We’re all looking back and second-guessing, asking how can we prevent this from happening in the future,” says Ray McCabe, national director of bridges and tunnels with New York-based HNTB Corp.

New York City’s 145th St. Bridge replacement was the result of the 102-year-old bridge failing an inspection.

“We had a full in-depth inspection performed, says Bob Collyer, deputy director of the bridges division of the New York City Department of Transportation. “The bridge had deteriorated over its lifetime.”

The reconstructed bridge, was constructed off site and floated down the Hudson River, around the tip of Manhattan, and eventually up the Harlem River to its location.

Indeed, more agencies have begun re-inspecting bridges since the August collapse, and following the collapse, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine ordered NJDOT to inspect the state’s 6,429 bridges. State officials say it would cost $7 billion to repair all New Jersey bridges, but officials said none were unsafe. Eight have deck-truss designs similar to the I-35 span that collapsed in Minneapolis.

McCabe says inspections are a good start but he says officials need to do a better job of prioritizing and funding bridges based on their age. He also says in the wake of the Minneapolis incident, both industry and government officials are “looking at more efficient ways to build bridges” that feature much more redundant structures -- “bridges that are designed to last 100 years with minimal maintenance.” 

On Connecticut’s biggest bridge project planned, the Q Bridge, those design plans will have to wait until a new bidding process begins. ConnDOT officials are working on breaking the project up into smaller pieces after the agency received no bidders late last year when a state contract was to be awarded. Agency officials did not return phone calls. 

But Don Shubert, executive director of the Connecticut Road Builders Association, said ConnDOT had met with industry officials and a national consultant, and was in the process of revising specifications, including price adjustments on material specifications.

“One of major concerns was the length of the project – eight years with no price adjustments allowed. It was very difficult to bid on,” said Shubert.