ALBANY, N.Y. — New York state has begun work on a new rail bridge across the Hudson River in Albany to replace a structure with portions dating to 1865, and also awarded funding to tear down a deteriorating, vacant warehouse that led to interruptions of rail service in 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced today.
The $634.8 million project to replace the Livingston Avenue Rail Bridge, which connects Albany and Rensselaer, will retire a bridge built in 1901 that uses pilings dating to 1865. It is part of a $33 billion five-year state Department of Transportation capital plan. The new seven-span lift bridge will be built adjacent to the current structure; traffic will be shifted to the new bridge upon its completion, projected for 2028. The new bridge will meet current standards for heights and widths of freight loads; it will also allow two trains to cross at the same time, unlike the current bridge, owned by CSX Transportation and leased to Amtrak, which has a 15-mph speed restriction and weight limits that only allow one train to cross at a time. It currently sees 12 Amtrak trains and two to six CSX and CPKC freight trains per day with no practical alternate route; any detour creates delays of up to 2½ hours.
The project will also create a route for pedestrians and cyclists and will more reliably accommodate marine traffic on the Hudson.
The state’s $10 million award in under the Restore New York Communities initiative will allow Albany County to tear down the Central Warehouse, an abandoned cold storage facility. The building, built in 1927, has mostly been empty since 1990, but the 500,00-square-foot building has been left standing because of the high cost of tearing down the structure, which has thick concrete walls and asbestos insulation. Pieces of the building falling onto the adjacent railroad tracks led to several days of cancellations of Amtrak service in the summer of 2022 [see “Amtrak suspends rail service west of Albany …,” Trains News Wire, July 29, 2022, and “State of emergency ended at Albany building …,” News Wire, Aug. 16, 2022].
“The Empire Corridor ias a gateway to the U.S. economy, powering innovation and industry for businesses in New York state and beyond,” Hochul said at a press conference held with the bridge as a backdrop. “We’re making investments in two critical pieces of infrastructure to unlock the potential for further growth and to ensure this vital corridor will be strong for decades to come.”
I’m guessing the first step is to raze the giant asbestos block then build the new bridge just upstream of the current structure.
In happier times, this was the freight bridge for NYC trains to cross the Hudson. The passenger bridge, further south, was demolished. It accessed Albany Union Station, still there but repurposed.