Gowanus Expressway Rehabilitation

Cost: $650 Million

The Gowanus Expressway, which carries 200,000 vehicles daily and much of the freight going to Queens and Long Island, was originally constructed in the 1940s and has not received significant repairs since the 1960s, when it was widened to six lanes. The New York State Department of Transportation, analyzing the 6.1-mile thoroughfare in the '80s, found extensive deterioration on both the roadway deck and the supporting steel structure. A new highway is badly needed, and the NYSDOT is scheduled to complete a Draft Environmental Impact Statement by 2011.

In the meantime, however, the agency is undergoing a $650 million interim repair program along several miles of the expressway, designed to extend the life of the roadway by 10 to 15 years while avoiding traffic disruption, as well as improve safety by increasing sight distances and increasing shoulder lanes. Split up into five phases corresponding to specific segments of the expressway, the project includes replacement of the concrete road deck, deteriorated bolts, rivets, diaphragms and bracing, reinforcement or replacement of stringers and floor beams, and painting of the supporting steel.

The current phase was started last April and is due to complete in 2011. Dubbed the Prospect Expressway Interchange this section of the highway is slightly more involved than the rest as it will add an HOV lane that is continuous (currently, the HOV section is closed from 5 to 11 am and the detour reroutes onto local streets). That is not the most challenging aspect of the project however – much more so are the surprises along the way.

"It’s very involved because it’s shop preparation, approval, steel acquisition, and then doing the work," explains George Hanna, NYSDOT construction area supervisor. "This is planned work in the contract, but on Gowanus we’ve been getting a lot of what we call "red flags"--critical steel repairs that we discover when we do the bridge inspection. Some of those repairs we don’t know abut until we remove the deck."

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The job is further complicated by the type of steel that is necessary for these repairs: because it's structural steel, it's not readily available fro DOT stock and has to be procured through the subs. In addition to the "red flags," the crew frequently comes across "safety flags" – deck deterioration in the form of potholes, joints, occasional punch-throughs, or other safety-related issues. "We could run up to 300 safety flags a year on Gowanus," Hanna says.

Maintaining traffic and minimizing disturbance to the surrounding residential areas is a key goal of the DOT and drives the way the crew (which reaches as high as 200 laborers on the contractor's side, as well as 28 state inspectors) organizes the work.

"It would be nice if we could have longer working hours to do this work and expedite it and finish these jobs without too much impact to the area," Hanna says, "but I guess the choices are very limited."

Team List

Owner: New York State Department of Transportation
NYSDOT Engineer-in-Charge: Albert Wong
Design firms: Bechtel Infrastructure Corporation, New York Chas H. Sells, Briarcliff Manor, NY URS Corporation, New York
Consulting inspection firms: HAKS, New York AECOM, New York KS Engineers, Newark, NJ IH Engineers, Princeton, NJ Haider Engineering, Baldwin, NY

Contractors:
Prime: DeFoe Corporation, Mount Vernon, NY)
Subs: Imperial Iron Works, Bronx, NY Matsos Contracting Corp., Whitestone, NY