Tappan Zee B. condition report

[Guest]

Tappan Zee Bridge inspection shows years of deterioration

By BRUCE GOLDING AND JORGE FITZ-GIBBON

THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original Publication: November 27, 2005)

Design flaws, corrosion and years of neglect have damaged the Tappan Zee Bridge so badly that an inspection report warns the beams supporting its safety railings could fail and more holes are likely to puncture its roadway.

Photos from the 2,929-page report show cracked columns, steel beams eaten clear through by rust, and off-center support bearings missing as much as 40 percent of their concrete footings.

The New York State Thruway Authority, which owns the bridge, initially refused to release the 10-volume report to The Journal News, but relented under pressure from the newspaper and government officials.

The report's findings are "most alarming," said Clarkstown Town Board member Catherine Nowicki, who commutes daily over the Tappan Zee and is co-chairwoman of an advisory task force on the bridge.

"We all don't like what we see, and then we're assured by the engineers that (they) are keeping up with repairs," she said. "People who have to go to work have no choice but to be assured."

Thruway officials say the Tappan Zee remains safe, even though it will reach its planned 50-year life expectancy Dec. 15.

"The bridge is not in a state of disrepair," said Ramesh Mehta, Hudson Valley division director for the Thruway Authority. "Of course, the condition is not like a new bridge. But its condition is safe."

The inspection report was compiled last year after a federally mandated, biennial review of the bridge, which provides a vital link for about 140,000 vehicles travelling between Westchester and Rockland counties every day. State officials are now weighing six options to repair or replace the 3.1-mile span over the Hudson River.

Those choices carry price tags as high as nearly $15 billion, not including the more than $100 million for planned repairs during the next two years. Added to those figures is more than $316 million spent on various fixes between 1995 and 2004 — spending that failed to keep the bridge's safety ratings from recently falling to some of their lowest levels in a decade, according to Federal Highway Administration data.

As part of last year's inspection, engineers issued 47 new "flags" identifying structural flaws, including three "red flags" indicating imminent danger, statistics provided by the authority show. Another 11 flags were reissued because earlier problems had not been fixed.

Specific findings included

• Steel beams that support the bridge's safety walks and railings were in poor condition, and probably would fail if the railing was hit by a truck.

• Parts of the roadway deck had deteriorated since the previous inspection, with areas of loose and cracked concrete that could open up into "punch-through" holes. Such holes now occur about once a month.

• Buckling was found in some steel bracing beams, although earlier inspections "did not indicate any reference to any buckled" beams.

Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef, one of the officials who called for release of the report, said immediate action was needed by the Thruway Authority.

"Their bridge is falling apart," Vanderhoef said. "They're racing to repair it, which is good. And they're ensuring that it's safe. But it's overused and it's got continuing defects that will crop up as a result of its age."

Routine maintenance and repair operations regularly close portions of the seven-lane bridge, to the frustration of Lower Hudson Valley drivers who jam the bridge approaches, sometimes for miles at a stretch.

The Tappan Zee's major design flaw is its drainage system — it essentially has none. Water from the roadway simply flows through slots under the curbs and onto the steel and concrete below. Water, road salt and dirt have washed over the bridge's substructure for decades, corroding steel and "spalling," or deteriorating, the concrete.

"Most of the problem was the drainage that we had on the bridge," said Mehta, the authority division director. "About 80 percent of the flags are as a result of those problems, drainage problems."

Retired Lehigh University engineering professor John Fisher, who worked as a consultant during a 2003 inspection of the Tappan Zee, also blamed the inadequate drainage for most of its problems.

"I think you've got this corrosion because up to now they haven't done anything about controlling the water," he said. "I guess somebody has made the decision they are going to ignore it and let it keep continuing, perhaps with the thought that the bridge is going to be replaced or seriously rehabbed."

Photos and flag reports from the 2004 inspection report detail dozens of bearings, beams and columns compromised by the roadway runoff — damage, Fisher said, that took years to occur.

Fisher said the deterioration did not appear to jeopardize the bridge's support structure, but it needed to be addressed before it became more severe.

"You wouldn't get this degree of corrosion without maintenance problems," he said. "Maintaining and controlling the water: That's a maintenance problem. ... Allowing dirt and debris to stay on the structure for large lengths of time: Those are maintenance problems."

Thruway officials contend they can keep the bridge up and running safely with continued repairs and upgrades.

"It's not a battery," project engineer Jim Morrow said. "We can recharge the bridge."

That assertion was challenged by Vanderhoef, the Rockland county executive.

"You got a C battery for a D-battery job," he said. "No matter how much you recharge it, it simply is not going to do the trick. It's designed for 100,000 vehicles and it's at 140,000 vehicles and climbing. So even if you use the analogy, the D battery is required now."

To solve the problem, the Thruway Authority, the Metro-North Railroad and the state Department of Transportation in September pared down to six the number of potential long-term fixes for the bridge, ranging from a $500 million plan to keep it in service as-is to a $14.5 billion proposal for a new span that would also carry both heavy- and light-rail lines. The short list eliminated controversial plans for a tunnel crossing to replace the bridge.

Still, the Thruway Authority is now planning the next interim upgrades. Last month, it announced plans to spend more than $100 million over two years to replace much of the roadway deck and some steel beams. An additional $4 million will be used to repair parts of the substructure.

The repairs include a plan to correct the drainage problem: installing a small lip under the bridge where the water drains off the roadway to interrupt the flow onto the substructure, and cause the water instead to drip directly into the river below.

The Thruway Authority concedes that the bridge was cheaply built, constructed amid steel shortages during the Korean War.

Although earlier bridge inspection reports were routinely available for public inspection, the Thruway Authority refused in June to release the latest report to The Journal News. After an appeal under the New York Freedom of Information Law, the authority turned over just 25 heavily blacked-out pages from the 2,929-page report, saying the withheld material could be used by terrorists to target the bridge for attack.

Public criticism of the authority's action — including allegations of a cover-up — led officials to reconsider their decision.

After details that could be used to identify specific locations on the bridge were blacked out, the newspaper was allowed to review the entire report.

Tarrytown Mayor Drew Fixell, who sits on the Tappan Zee advisory task force, said the widespread deterioration of the bridge made dealing with it something of a "double-edged sword" for the Thruway Authority.

"They don't seem to have a very strong interest in repairing the bridge long-term. They do seem to want to replace it," he said. "On the other hand, they also have a definite interest in not alarming the public, not looking like they're not doing their job."

[Jared1979 19]

Something has to be done to that bridge it is not safe anymore

[Guest]

January 17, 2006

A Bridge That Has Nowhere Left to Go

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

The New York Times

The Tappan Zee Bridge, the most critical transportation link across the Hudson River north of New York City, is not even half as old as the Brooklyn Bridge, but its warranty has already expired.

Started on the cheap during the Korean War, the Tappan Zee was deliberately built to last just 50 years. It passed that milestone last month, just days after transportation planners began gathering public advice about how to fix or replace it.

But the decaying, overburdened span's anniversary was more bitter than sweet. Little love has been lost between the Tappan Zee and the tens of thousands of commuters who depend on it. They complain about the poor condition of its roadway and the backups caused by every breakdown and flat tire.

Even before it was built, the bridge's own designers said it would be one of the "ugliest" in the region. Half a century later, the Tappan Zee has not aged gracefully. There are cracks in its concrete columns, its superstructure is rusting away and its deck is nearly worn through.

The New York State Thruway Authority, which owns the 3.1-mile-long bridge carrying the Thruway over the Hudson, has said that the deck, some structural steel, the concrete walkway and electrical systems have "deteriorated significantly."

The authority plans to spend more than $100 million next year just to patch the bridge's holes and replace some of its corroded steel, a process sure to make travel even slower for commuters.

After years of dawdling while the bridge crumbled, state officials say they are rushing to complete a review of the most feasible solutions to the problem of the Tappan Zee. But a decision is still two years off and a new bridge would require eight additional years and as much as $14.5 billion to build, they say.

It was built between Tarrytown, in Westchester County, and Nyack, in Rockland County, at what is nearly the widest part of the Hudson River, in the 1950's, when Rockland was still largely rural and just beginning to attract New York City commuters.

The bridge, which cost just $81 million - the equivalent of about $550 million today - was built using a naval construction technique that incorporated a set of hollow concrete caissons to support the main span.

Unlike other bridges in the region - The Brooklyn Bridge is 122 years old, and the George Washington Bridge will turn 75 this year - the Tappan Zee was not built to last, because of wartime pressures, according to Ramesh Mehta, the divisional director of the Thruway Authority in charge of the southern Hudson Valley.

"The fact of the matter is that the bridge is past its usable life and no matter what repairs are done it must ultimately be replaced," said C. Scott Vanderhoef, the Rockland County executive. "It's reached its age limit and it's reached its capacity. We're just pouring money into a bridge that ultimately will not be there."

Mr. Vanderhoef's counterpart at the other end of the span, Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester County executive, blames the bridge's poor condition on the benign neglect of "screwed-up government."

State officials consistently refused to level with the public about how much money was required to maintain critical infrastructure, like the Tappan Zee, he said.

In late September, the three agencies announced that they had whittled the original list of about 15 alternatives down to six. Two of them involve keeping the old bridge and repairing it, either a little or a lot. A complete rehabilitation of the Tappan Zee would cost at least $2 billion, the planners estimated.

The four remaining options call for a new bridge, which would be built alongside the old one, just north of the existing span. Each involves a different configuration of mass transit - either commuter trains, light rail or express buses - sandwiched between the traffic lanes. The estimates for a new bridge range from $9 billion to $14.5 billion.

At a presentation last month in Nyack, Mr. Anderson said the planners expected to choose one of the alternatives by the end of next year. If a new bridge is built, he said, it would probably be completed in 2015. In the meantime, he assured the audience that "the roadway is safe and will be safe for the foreseeable future."

The voice of Mr. Vanderhoef, the county executive, who was born in Orangetown and graduated from Tappan Zee High School, carries no trace of sentiment when he talks about the future of the old bridge that sparked a boom in Rockland. The county's population has more than tripled, to 290,000 residents, since 1950, and is projected to increase by more than 25 percent in the next 25 years.

"I don't think it's that ugly," Mr. Vanderhoef said of the Tappan Zee, adding that he did not care about the appearance of its replacement.

"The key is that it operate, that it handle the traffic," he said. "If that requires a lack of aesthetic approach, then so be it. I'm not suggesting that we build an ugly bridge, but if it requires that, then fine."

[JM15 386]

maybe it is time to build a new one instead of putting more money into it

[Guest]

Tappan Zee Bridge is "absolutely safe" official says

By KHURRAM SAEED

THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original Publication: April 5, 2006)

NEW CITY — The New York State Thruway official in charge of the Tappan Zee Bridge today assured a roomful of Rockland elected officials that the span was "absolutely safe."

Ramesh Mehta, Hudson Valley division director of the state Thruway Authority, also said that a thorough inspection of the 50-year-old bridge would begin next month or no later than June.

An Albany consulting firm will examine the bridge's foundation, steel, deck and road surface.

The inspection also will include an underwater study of the support pilings and a survey of the soil around the pilings. It will take about six months to complete.

Elected officials and community representatives were invited quiz Mehta about the bridge's condition during this morning's 90-minute meeting in the Rockland County Legislature chambers.

Rockland Legislature Chairwoman Harriet Cornell, who is a member of the Westchester Rockland Tappan Zee Futures Task Force, organized the session.

Read more about this story tomorrow in The Journal News.

[Guest KFD236]

I don't think that the bridge is safe because there was a paper written on it.

Just this part of the report that was from the first post by HOSS from The Journal News.

"Design flaws, corrosion and years of neglect have damaged the Tappan Zee Bridge so badly that an inspection report warns the beams supporting its safety railings could fail and more holes are likely to puncture its roadway.

Photos from the 2,929-page report show cracked columns, steel beams eaten clear through by rust, and off-center support bearings missing as much as 40 percent of their concrete footings."

This is not safe something needs to be done before the bridge does it for us.

[Firefighter57 0]

I was just at an engineering expo over the weekend and I started talking to the engineer who is redesigning the decking on the bridge. He was saying that the main problem now is the salt water and also salt during the winter that gets washed off and over the bridge. What happens now is that all of the water and such goes under the curbs and barriers, draining it all on the decking supports. The new design calls for the water to run off the absolute end of the deck. It will run under the barriers but not under the deck. The water will then just run off the end of the deck....

|: barrier _:deck C:curb =:supports W:water

NOW

__|C__________--_________C|___

==w==================w===

the water runs on the deck and under that c but then runs on the beams holding the deck up

AFTER NEW DECKING

____|____________|_____________|____

w ============================ w

there will be openings at the bottom of the barriers to allow water to pass under them while still flowing on the deck....then the water will run right off the end of the deck without running on the beams.

it really is an easy solution to a poor design. only prob is it calls for all new decking.

Edited April 5, 2006 by Firefighter57