WASHINGTON — The Federal Railroad Administration and Amtrak will cut some elements from a planned rehabilitation of the Northeast Corridor’s Dock Bridge over the Passaic River in New Jersey, reducing the cost of the project by $140 million.
Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a press release that “refocusing” the project “will fast-track a vital repair to our country’s outdated infrastructure and save millions in the process.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation says the revised project will eliminate what it calls “unnecessary aesthetic costs like enhanced lighting,” while also deferring work “where structural elements still have a useful life.” By reducing the scope of the rehabilitation, cost of the project will be reduced from $375 million to approximately $235 million, the DOT says, while cutting nearly two years off the time to complete the project.
“This new plan will help us quickly increase the bridge’s reliability and safety, while also maximizing the useful life of this critical piece of infrastructure,” Amtrak President Roger Harris said in the press release. “It’s a big win for U.S. transportation, and a good example of how creative thinking and value engineering can make a project plan even better.”
The Dock Bridge is a six-track, three-span movable bridge between Newark and Harrison, N.J., dating to 1935 and carrying more than 700 Amtrak, NJ Transit, and PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) trains daily. A permit from the U.S. Coast Guard will permit the bridge to be converted to a fixed span. Details on the project in its original form are available on the Amtrak website.
The cost reduction of $140M by revising the project would seem to indicate that the plan all along was to convert the bridge to a fixed span. This was recently done with a railroad bridge in Milwaukee over a much smaller waterway due to a moveable span was no longer needed for water traffic. I wonder what the Dock Bridge would have cost if it were necessary to replace all that moving-bridge gears, etc. I don’t know much about bridge engineering, but if someone out there has a figure on this, please share it. Thank you.
Yes, I know that bridge in Milwaukee. Corps of Engineers did not declare the canal as no longer navigable (at that time — probably they have by now) …. but CP Rail decided that question by fixing the bridge span. I could tell it was fixed because there was no break in the rails – they were continuously welded through.
1. How do they convert it to a fixed span? It won’t raise and lower any more? 2. It looks like 1935 was also the last year it was painted. 3. Kinda fuzzy in my mind, but wasn’t this this bridge that a train ran through while it was in the open position many years ago, killing NY Yankee second baseman Georgie Sternweiss?
#3 correction by me: No, it was the CNJ Newark Bay Bridge, not the PRR Bridge.
Wise decision… Note that the estimated construction completion is 2029.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
We don’t need unneeded items. The mechanical needs replacement and the span and the counterweights need replacement.