creeeeeek . . .

Why don't they raise tolls already and get on with it. It will cost a lot more to repair in the future than now.

Pulaski Skyway repairs will cost millions more than first thought

by Tom Feeney
The Star-Ledger
February 25

It's going to cost the state millions of dollars more than previously thought to fix the aged, crumbling and heavily traveled Pulaski Skyway.

The vital link between the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City and points west has been a top priority of highway and bridge engineers at the New Jersey Department of Transportation since the fatal collapse of a bridge in Minnesota last year. Eventually, they plan to replace it. But with the state's transportation trust fund running on empty and the replacement estimates ballooning, the state started work last summer intended to keep the bridge sound for a decade or more.

Those repairs, initially expected to cost $10 million, revealed the urgent need for a more massive overhaul. Now, they are going to need to spend close to $40 million this year alone, with the promise of more to come. Read tomorrow's Star-Ledger for all the details.

Today's NJ.com... like no one predicted it would be worse off once they started the work... check out the website too for an amazing picture of the beast that is the Pulaski.


Pulaski Skyway repairs will cost millions more than first thought
by Tom Feeney/The Star-Ledger Monday February 25, 2008, 10:01 PM

The cost of fixing the aged, crumbling and heavily traveled Pulaski Skyway will be tens of millions of dollars higher than the Department of Transportation originally believed.

The department started work last summer on the $10 million first phase of a rehab project intended to keep the bridge sound for the decade or longer it would take to replace it.

But once work started, DOT officials said Monday, they realized the Skyway was in need of a more urgent and expensive overhaul, one that will cost close to $40 million this year alone. They plan to shift $30 million from other bridge and road projects to cover the difference, and they expect to have to spend more money in future years.

"There's only so much money to go around," said Tom Wospil, DOT's director of capital investment. "We're back to the same old math problem: If something goes up, something else must go down."

The Pulaski Skyway has played a central role in the public discourse over New Jersey's aging infrastructure since the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed in August, killing 13 people.

The Skyway, which crosses the Hackensack and Passaic rivers from Jersey City to Newark, is of the same outdated design as the Minneapolis span and is more than 30 years older. On the 0-to-100 scale that bridge engineers use to measure a span's ability to carry traffic, the section of the Skyway in Hudson County scores a 2. The section in Essex County scores a 0.

When work started last summer on the DOT's $10 million rehab project, lanes at the eastern end of the 3.5-mile Skyway were closed, giving DOT inspectors a chance to look more closely at the deck. They found it in worse shape than they had thought, the deputy state transportation engineer, Richard W. Dunne, said yesterday.

The surface of the roadway was badly cracked and spalled, Dunne said. The bond between that surface and the bridge deck below it was weakening.

Despite the additional problems found on the surface, officials say they still believe the span is perfectly safe for the 85,000 motorists who cross it every day.

The Minnesota bridge collapse was blamed on the failure of undersized gusset plates. The plates in the Skyway are not undersized, Dunne said.

The $10 million project called for deck repairs on only part of the span, but department engineers determined a harsh winter could do irreparable harm to the surface unless the entire length were repaired, Dunne said.

In addition, when the estimated cost of rebuilding the Skyway ran to $1.2 billion, DOT officials realized they would have to make the existing structure last longer, officials said. That will mean improving drainage on the road surface and making repairs to the steel structures beneath the deck, he said.

The state is not likely to have the money to rebuild or replace the Skyway anytime soon. New Jersey officials expect federal transportation funding to be flat in the coming years; the state's own Transportation Trust Fund will be insolvent by 2011 without action.

Gov. Jon Corzine's plan to sharply raise tolls on the Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway and the Atlantic City Expressway was intended to pay down state debt and provide long-term funding for transportation projects, but the plan has proved unpopular with the public and lawmakers.

"The governor is working to create a long-term, fiscally responsible mechanism for sustained transportation funding," DOT spokeswoman Erin Phalon said yesterday.

In the meantime, the DOT hopes to fund the Pulaski work by robbing Peter to pay Paul. It has asked the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority for permission to shift money set aside in the capital plan for 11 other road and bridge projects.

Those 11 projects would not lose their money, Wospil said. The funds would just be pushed back another year. The NJTPA tabled the request Monday and won't make a decision until next month.

Work starts Monday on Skyway, Route 278

by Tom Feeney - Star Ledger
Saturday August 25, 2007, 8:10 AM


The New Jersey Department of Transportation will begin construction projects Monday on two major thoroughfares - Route 278 and the Pulaski Skyway.

The Route 278 project is a $2.5 million resurfacing of the highway from east of Routes 1&9 to the Goethals Bridge in Linden and Elizabeth.

The work, which is expected to continue until November, will be done primarily in off-peak hours, the DOT announced. Motorists will feel some impact. Temporary detours and lane closures may be necessary, and ramps will have to be closed one at a time for surfacing. Detours will be set up when the ramps are closed.

The other project is a $10 million rehabilitation of the 75-year-old Pulaski Skyway, which runs through Newark, Kearny and Jersey City. A DOT contractor will replace 1,250 feet of roadway at the eastern end of the bridge and shore up the structure by making repairs to the pier caps and parapets.

Traffic will be disrupted from 9 p.m. Fridays to 6 a.m. Mondays for most of the next 12 months, the DOT said. The eastbound outside lane of the Skyway will be closed on weekends until December. The westbound outside lane will be closed on weekends from March to June 2008. And from June to August 2008, the inside lanes in both directions will be closed.

The DOT had planned to change the traffic pattern this weekend on the Route 287 northbound bridge over Durham Avenue, but the project has been delayed by rain, and the lane shift now will not go into effect until Sept. 8, the DOT announced.

For real-time information about traffic delays, visit njcommuter.com.

The Record has pictures of the damages on the Pulaski Skyway.

The skyway -- like the Minnesota bridge -- has a non-redundant "truss" design with steel beam sections that could cause a deck collapse if one failed

Pulaski Skyway, at 75, to get first wave of critical repairs

Photos: Damage on the Pulaski Skyway

How safe are Hudson County's bridges?

Hoboken/UC Viaduct, Pulaski Skyway rated 'deficient'; state report due Sept. 17

Ricardo Kaulessar
Reporter Staff Writer 08/19/2007

THE SKYWAY GOING A NEW WAY ? The Pulaski Skyway the four-lane, 3.5-mile structure that spans between Jersey City and Newark will be undergoing interim repairs starting later this month.
Gov. Jon Corzine recently ordered State Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri to submit a report to him by Sept. 17 detailing recent inspections and repair estimates for the 6,429 state, county, and local bridges in New Jersey.

Hudson County is home to more than a hundred vehicular, pedestrian, and railroad bridges.

County government is responsible for 34 of them, and the remaining 70-plus bridges are operated either by the DOT, the NJ Turnpike, or a particular municipality.

Two bridges in the county, a viaduct between Hoboken and Union City and the Pulaski Skyway (which has extensions in Jersey City), have been rated "structurally deficient" by the federal government.

The matter got an extra look because of the recent collapse of Minneapolis's Interstate 35W Bridge on Aug. 1. That eight-lane bridge was 40 years old.

The state plans to spend $543 million on its bridge repair program in 2008.

'Inspected six months ago'

The Hudson County Division of Engineering is responsible for inspecting the 34 county-owned bridges.

Bob Jasek, director of the county's engineering division, issued a statement recently through the county spokesman James Kennelly saying, "All our bridges were inspected six months ago, and not one was reported in need of repair."

Jasek said the county retains a consultant who performs inspections of all county-owned bridges every two years.

He also said Gov. Corzine ordered a review of the steel deck truss bridges like the one in Minneapolis, and thus the county will not be involved in the review, since it does own any bridges of that type.

But there is one truss bridge that is often used by county residents: the Pulaski Skyway.

'What is a 'truss bridge'?

A truss bridge is a type of structure where the straight sections of the bridge are connected by pin joints. Considered one of the oldest types of modern bridges, there are 756 are in the United States.

Jersey City has three truss bridges, which are not owned by the county: the 12th and 14th Street viaducts on Route 139 that run to the entrances of the Holland Tunnel and the Pulaski Skyway, and the Lincoln Highway Bridge, which crosses over the Hackensack River between Jersey City and Kearny.

The Pulaski Skyway itself is a truss bridge that is about to get a serious look.

'Pulaski Skyway 'structurally deficient'

One of the most famous truss bridges is the Pulaski Skyway that runs through parts of Jersey City, Kearny, and Newark.

Opened in 1932, the four-lane, 3.5-mile structure includes two 550 foot cantilever spans, one over the Hackensack River between Jersey City and Kearny, and the other over the Passaic River between Kearny and Newark.

Recently, it received a "structurally deficient" tag from the federal government, as it earned multiple assessments of poor conditions with an overall evaluation of "basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action."

"Structurally deficient" is engineer-speak for a bridge that, while not in danger of collapse, has structural defects that require attention immediately to prevent further deterioration.

Last week, state DOT workers with machinery checked the structure of the Skyway on the Kearny side.

DeGise: 'Old rickety structure'

The Skyway, however, is undergoing a 10-year rehabilitation starting later this month as the DOT plans to spend $10 million a year to fix it.

This project will provide for interim repairs on the Pulaski Skyway to various parts of the Skyway as well as spot painting, electrical safety, installation of protective netting over the NJ Turnpike, and concrete encasement removal.

According to DOT spokesperson Tim Greeley, the first phase of rehab on the Skyway will involve over 1,200 feet of roadway at the eastern end of the structure toward Jersey City.

But Greeley said there is an ongoing study looking at replacing the entire Skyway, with the estimated cost in the billions.

Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise, a Jersey City resident, said he'd like to see a new bridge there.

"I have been over the Skyway several thousand times in my life, and it's an old rickety structure," DeGise said. "My staff and I took a trip down the Hackensack River last year, and when you looked up at the Skyway, you could see the deterioration, the concrete falling off the steel, and the steel turning orange."

Over the years, the Skyway has earned the reputation as one of the more dangerous roads in the state, with hundreds of car accidents.

A 'structurally deficient' Hoboken/UC viaduct

The term "structurally deficient" has been cited in articles about bridge safety, along with the term "functionally obsolete." They are criteria issued by the Federal Highway Administration in their National Bridge Inventory to rate the condition of bridges across the United States. The determinations are based on inspection reports provided by the DOT to the Federal Highway Administration.

Functionally obsolete means a bridge may no longer be adequate for the traffic that it currently accommodates.

Of the 34 Hudson County-operated bridges listed in the National Bridge Inventory, one is rated as structurally deficient, while nine carry the "functionally obsolete" tag.

The bridge marked "structurally deficient" in the Federal Highway Administration's National Bridge Inventory for 2006 is Hoboken's 14th Street Viaduct, which starts at Willow Avenue in Hoboken and ends at Manhattan Avenue in Union City.

The inventory does not offer exact details, but notes the "poor condition" of the substructure, or the section under the bridge surface.

Built in 1910, the 1,460-foot structure has average daily traffic of more than 20,000 vehicles.

Last week, DeGise said there are plans to rebuild the Viaduct starting in 2010. The rehab is estimated to cost $50 to $60 million and will take two years.

"This is our top priority, and we have designs for a new one," DeGise said. "It's just a matter of finding the money."

DeGise added, "[The county] would love to fix all of our bridges as soon as possible, but it can't happen all at once."

Out of the bridges operated by other government bodies, 12 were found to be structurally deficient and 26 were functionally obsolete.

Many of these bridges were built before 1950, before SUVs or increased vehicular ownership.

Not so upbeat

The upbeat assessment from Jasek about the county's bridges is of little consolation to Hudson County Freeholder Jeffrey Dublin, who worked previously as an inspector in the Hudson County Department of Roads & Public Property,

"It sounds good, but show me paperwork," said Dublin, who planned to bring up the issue of county bridges at the freeholders meeting this past Thursday.

Others already getting attention

The Route 139 viaducts leading to and from the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City are currently undergoing a major $225 million rehabilitation that will last until 2009.

This New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) project being done in six stages, with the rehabilitation of the 14th Street Viaduct in Jersey City starting in February 2005. The project ends by fall 2009 with the rehabilitation of the 12th Street Viaduct.

The project includes re-decking of the entire roadway surface and super and substructure repairs. Workers will install a safety barrier and light poles.

The 12th Street Viaduct opened in 1927 while the 14th Street Viaduct was built in 1950.

Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com

After Minneapolis Disaster, Concerns About the Pulaski Skyway

The New York Times
By RUSS BUETTNER
Published: August 11, 2007

The Pulaski Skyway, a three-mile long steel silhouette rising and falling across the Meadowlands of New Jersey, has over the years attracted its share of praise, curiosity and, for those paying close attention to ?The Sopranos,? a glancing kind of television fame.

The Pulaski Skyway was inspected this spring, as required by the federal government every two years, but the results have not yet been made public.

The bridge, named after Casimir Pulaski, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, was called the ?most beautiful? steel bridge by the American Institute of Steel Construction the year it was finished. It was destroyed by Orson Welles?s fictional Martians in his famous ?War of the Worlds? radio broadcast in 1938. And more recently, its blackened steel beams flickered past Tony Soprano?s face in the opening sequence of the hit HBO show.

In the last week, though, the 75-year-old bridge has gained another kind of notoriety: It is one of 756 bridges across the country built in the same antiquated design as the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. These bridges, engineers now say, possess a distinctive lack of secondary support, meaning that the failure of just one piece of steel could send them plummeting to the ground.

And the Pulaski Skyway, again like the Minnesota bridge, has been found in recent years to be ?structurally deficient,? a term indicating concern about several key aspects of its durability, but not a risk of imminent collapse.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey insisted this week that all the state?s bridges were safe, but suggested that the skyway might be at a critical juncture.

Mr. Corzine said that instead of spending the $10 million a year now planned to keep the skyway safe and operational, it might be wiser to replace it. But it is not clear where the $1 billion needed to do so would come from.

The exact nature of the government?s concern about the skyway has not been made public. This spring, inspectors finished the complete inspection of the bridge that the federal government requires every two years.

But the State Department of Transportation, citing security concerns, refused to release the records of that inspection or discuss whether the findings differed substantially from those of the previous inspection. Another inspection, in response to the Minneapolis collapse, is under way.

The skyway passed its previous inspection, in 2004, though problems were noted, according to federal data.

The federal government?s rating system scores bridges on a scale of 0 to 9 in several categories, with 9 being perfect and 0 requiring a shutdown. In 2004 the skyway was rated 4 for the physical condition of its structural members and 5 for the physical condition of its piers and other substructure components.

Those numbers are not dire. But the scores are similar to those assigned to the bridge in Minneapolis. It received a 4 for structure and 6 for substructure during its most recent inspection.

For all its similarities to the Minneapolis bridge, which was completed in 1967, the Pulaski Skyway, though 35 years older, may have some advantages.

For example, the skyway may be much more sturdy than the bridge in Minneapolis, said John Schuring, a professor in the department of civil engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Because less was known then about how much weight various materials could handle, engineers of the era generally added more steel support than was later considered necessary.

?A lot of the bridges built back in the first half of the 20th century are a lot more robust,? he said.

The utility of the skyway has rarely been in doubt. Originally called the Newark-Jersey City viaduct, it was built to move the thousands of cars and trucks a day that began to emerge from the Holland Tunnel after it was completed in 1927.

Its fast passage across the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers provided the final link between Manhattan and the nation?s first ?superhighway,? the transcontinental Lincoln Highway. On its first day of operation in 1932, 48,611 cars crossed the skyway; today the number averages 85,000, according to the Department of Transportation.

?The thing that the Pulaski Skyway does is that it allows you to leap over all the railyards, the Meadowlands, the industrial wastelands that pepper that area,? said Jeffrey M. Zupan, a senior fellow for transportation at the Regional Plan Association. ?It?s an extraordinary thing.?

As swift as that eight-minute-or-so journey can be, it is also often an unsettling experience. The skyway was modeled after railroad bridges, with lanes that were uncomfortably narrow and, originally, undivided.

Those factors proved deadly to car passengers. In the skyway?s first 14 months of operation, 14 people in cars were killed in crashes with trucks on the bridge. Jersey City banned trucks from the bridge in early 1934.

?When they banned truck traffic there, they made the skyway 90 percent obsolete of its intended purpose,? said Steven Hart, author of ?The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America?s First Superhighway,? a recently published history of the skyway.

But removing trucks may have lengthened the skyway?s lifespan, saving it from years of added weight and vibrations, which engineers at the time did not know caused steel to fatigue and eventually crack, Mr. Schuring said.

The distinctive design in question is known as ?steel truss deck,? in which the roadway sits atop interconnected triangles of steel girders. The Pulaski Skyway, composed of steel truss decks and two cantilevered sections over the rivers, is the eighth-most heavily traveled such bridge in the nation, and the busiest in the metropolitan region, according to federal bridge data.

All bridges of that design are being reinspected in the wake of the Minneapolis collapse. There are eight in New Jersey, 33 in New York and six in Connecticut.

The skyway last underwent major repairs in the mid-1980s, when its roadway was resurfaced and steel supports were reinforced at a cost of about $19 million.

A new round of repairs is set to begin this month. They include replacing the pier caps, the points where the steel structure connects and transfers weight to the massive concrete pillars below, key points of stress. The safety wall along the side of the lanes will also be repaired, and the concrete that encases the steel under the roadway deck will be removed and replaced in sections.

?These are our best efforts to rehabilitate the Pulaski Skyway to a fully functional state,? said Sandra Gutarra, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Transportation.

The repairs, combined with the lucky turning points in the skyway?s past, have led experts to refrain from raising alarm.

?I would not panic about the Pulaski,? Mr. Schuring said. ?We have to continue to watch it closely, but I would not just say that we have to quickly replace it.?

Brewster you make a good point...

( Click any image to make it large )

Today I was driving up north on the NJ Turnpike and I went right by the Pulaski Skyway -- it is striking how it rests on little points as seen in this tacky stain glass image...



You can just imagine what would happen if any one of them, or if a set of them ever failed...







Click the link below to see a really large image of these little points.

Hard to believe, but they have pins in them so they kind of look like hinges! I wonder about the metal fatigue after all these years ( since 1932 when it opened ) I think we are just lucky that NJ doesn't use the amount of road salt that they use in MN and in Canada where bridges have collapsed -- but I am aware that the the Pulaski is a heck of a lot older than the bridge that just failed.

Click this link to see a really large image of these little points:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia ... aski_Skyway_full_view.jpg

Here also is Wiki --

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ima ... aski_Skyway_full_view.jpg

There are plans for a replacement -- see this tread on JCLIST

Click here for jclist thread

Wonder if it and all the other bridges will be fixed in time -- Christians can always get something for the dashboard but what about the rest of us?



Quote:

Although the Brooklyn Bridge's walkways got to shaking violently (wave like) with the mobs crossing it on 9/11 that they had to close the bridge -- those who were on it thought they were all going to die in the East River...

JC and NJ administators are 'mentally deficient' - that's the real problem.

Billions needed to repair Jersey spans

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Billions of dollars are needed to repair or replace more than 700 bridges in New Jersey that are rated structurally deficient, a sum that dwarfs the current amount budgeted, officials said yesterday.

Many of those bridges carry some of the state's busiest roads, raising concerns of a catastrophic collapse like the one that sent Interstate 35 into the Mississippi River in Minnesota on Wednesday. That bridge had been rated structurally deficient since 1990.

In addition, New Jersey contains more than 1,000 bridges considered obsolete, many of which are reduced to carrying minimal loads and face replacement or closure because they don't meet current standards for lane width or other factors.

Together, those categories account for over one-fourth of the 6,400 bridges in New Jersey that are at least 20 feet long. In addition, hundreds of the 4,500 tiny spans need work.

State officials and outside experts said that while the needs are great, safety has not been compromised. One engineer working in the state since the 1950s could not recall any bridge collapse in New Jersey.

"If there's a scintilla of evidence that a bridge is unsafe, we will shut it down," Department of Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri said yesterday.

The cost of tending to the more than 700 structurally deficient bridges is among the data that is being collected under a directive issued Thursday by Gov. Jon S. Corzine. But Kolluri already knows the figure will be huge.

"The amount of money in the long term that we need to fix them is enormous," Kolluri said.

It would cost $2 billion just for the planned repair or replacement of the eight top priority state-owned bridges, including repairs to the 75-year-old Pulaski Skyway that crosses two rivers between Jersey City and Kearny, Kolluri said.

Replacing the Pulaski Skyway alone would cost $1 billion. Until then, tens of millions of dollars are budgeted for repairs.

Some 423,000 vehicles cross those eight bridges each day, Kolluri said, with nearly one-fourth of them on the Pulaski Skyway.

The budget for the current fiscal year allots $509 million for bridge repair, replacement and inspection, he said, up 2.6 percent from $496 million last year. Repairing or replacing the nearly 500 county-owned bridges that are structurally deficient would cost over $1 billion.

======================================================
8 'top priority' bridges for NJ8/3/2007, 5:19 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
The Associated Press


(AP) — Of the 6,400 bridges longer than 20 feet in New Jersey, eight aging spans are considered top priority for repair or replacement by the state Department of Transportation (from oldest to youngest):

_The Route 139 viaduct to the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City, built in 1927.

_St. Paul's Bridge, which carries Routes 1 and 9 over railroad tracks in Jersey City, built in 1928.

_The Whitpenn Bridge, which carries Route 7 over the Hackensack River in Jersey City, built in 1930.

_The Pulaski Skyway, which takes Routes 1 and 9 over two rivers between Jersey City and Kearny in Hudson County, built in 1932.

_The Route 52 causeway over Great Egg Harbor Bay between Somers Point and Ocean City in Cape May County, built in 1933.

_The Highlands Bridge, which carries Route 36 over an inlet to Sandy Hook Bay between Highlands and Sea Bright in Monmouth County, built in 1941.

_The Route 3 bridge over the Passaic River in Rutherford in Bergen County, built in 1949.

_The Dorland J. "Don" Henderson Bridge, which carries Route 72 over Manahawkin Bay to Long Beach Island in Ocean County, built in 1959.

___

Source: New Jersey Department of Transportation.

New Jersey's bridges are in a serious state of decay. This problem was recognized as early as 5 years ago during McGreevey's first year in office in February of 2001 (see link below). Little has been done since then to move repair work forward however. This state is "tax relief" crazy and so every politician who gets to Trenton is more concerned with cutting taxes then paying for things the state needs, like bridge repairs. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/A ... ate:D&s_trackval=GooglePM

+1

Include D.O.T, MTA and PA of NYNJ

DTG

[quote]
fat-ass-bike wrote:
From my experience, only the worst and lame, dumb-ass qualified individuals work as public servants - in the engineering and inspection departments of city hall. From my reckoning, MOST people who work for city hall might have the necessary qualification (one hopes) but they are the guys that just scrape through school and can't make it in the private sector and that's why we have disasters like this in our country.

The only real skill these guys have is the art of 'double talk' (buck and accountability passing).
I guess you have to be greatful that these 'structural engineers' don't inspect commerical aircrafts!

quote]



FAB Is on the money!!!


DTG

Corzine: Inspect all 6,400 in N.J.
Friday, August 03, 2007

SOUTH PLAINFIELD - Gov. Jon S. Corzine yesterday ordered a report on the condition and inspection process of more than 6,000 bridges in New Jersey to ensure they're safe after an interstate highway bridge collapsed in Minnesota.

Corzine said the state has 6,400 bridges, 2,400 of which are under state control. The other bridges are either under federal or local government control, but he said he wants to see reports on all bridges.

He said he wants an interim report from the state transportation commissioner in a week and a final report in 45 days.

Specifically, Corzine said, he wants the report to detail bridge conditions, safety ratings, how often the bridges are inspected and the cost of needed repairs.

Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri said federal law requires bridges be inspected every two years. He said the state follows that requirement, but inspects the Route 36 drawbridge in Highlands four times a year because it's considered the worst movable bridge in the state.

"It is still safe for the motorist to use, but it is in pretty bad shape," Kolluri said. "We think this particular bridge needs more attention than once every two years."

He said concrete on the bridge is eroding and steel is rusting.

Kolluri said 28 percent of the state's bridges are either structurally deficient - yet safe for motorists - or obsolete, meaning they lack shoulders or have narrow lanes.

He said that ranks New Jersey 34th in the nation in bridge condition.

Corzine compared the Minnesota bridge to the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City.

"The only problem is the Pulaski Skyway is about 30 years older," Corzine said, emphasizing there's no indication the skyway is unsafe.

The state's latest transportation funding plan calls for spending $509 million per year on bridge repairs, up from $318 million two years ago.- AP.

For those of you who drive through Route 1-9, pay attention to the Pulaski Skyway bridge foundations in the circle where Rt. 1-9 intersects with Tonelle Avenue and the Skyway. Quite scary!

A lot of the bridges in the area (NY/NJ) are due for major repairs or complete replacement. Have you noticed, for example, the nets on some of the big bridges connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn to hold the debris falling from the bridge structure?

Unfortunately, our governments have historically not paid much attention to the national infrastructure (I guess it is just not "cool" to talk about repairing bridges, train lines, etc.) So it wouldn't surprise to see more disasters like the one in Minneapolis happening in other areas of the country in the not so distant future...

From my experience, only the worst and lame, dumb-ass qualified individuals work as public servants - in the engineering and inspection departments of city hall. From my reckoning, MOST people who work for city hall might have the necessary qualification (one hopes) but they are the guys that just scrape through school and can't make it in the private sector and that's why we have disasters like this in our country.
The only real skill these guys have is the art of 'double talk' (buck and accountability passing).
I guess you have to be greatful that these 'structural engineers' don't inspect commerical aircrafts!

This disaster will and should bankrupt the city by families that have lost love ones and survivors - I'm surprised that the city doesn't use the 'terrorist act' card!

I watched CNN for a good part of the day yesterday as they continually covered this bridge incident, and at some point, they were interviewing a Structural Engineer. The SE basically said that the "structurally deficient" designation of bridges means next to nothing, mainly because the definition of a "structurally deficient" bridge could mean many many different things. he was saying that they are very strong words to be labeling bridges in most cases.

Quote: That's exactly what I'm talking about. The Tacoma-Narrows was built in 38 when they got cocky and started to use real math and the material science of the day to design suspension bridges with what they thought was a reasonable safety margin. Before the 20's it was usually some Scots curmudgeon who did it by rule of thumb and a prayer, but did it with 1000% safety margin rather than 150%. That's why there's 180 year old railroad bridges in Britain and the Brooklyn Bridge is solid as a rock. Even so, the Tacoma-Narrows bridge bridge fell victim to a little understood at the time wind resonance rather than a load failure. I remember seeing the film of it in HS physics. It vibrated itself to death like a woodwind reed. A good read is Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail.

I dont know if I'd say they overbuilt everything back then. Ever heard of the Tacoma-Narrows bridge in Washington? That was built in the 20's or 30's and that had an embarrassingly short lifespan for a bridge. Either way, they are starting the work so Im sure its nothing too serious to be concerned about.

Cool, 6 of the 8 "structurally deficient" bridges in NJ are in our neighborhood! A number of them are drawbridges too, won't that be a fun collapse.

I'm a little surpised they think these aren't strong enough, in the old days the engineers really didn't know what they were doing, and so overbuilt like crazy. That, and that the "honest graft" corruption style of the day meant that the steel supplier was connected so they would buy more steel than they really needed. Our modern corruption is so efficient the money simply vanishes with nothing to show for it.

Too bad Hudson County and JC are "financially deficient". We'll be living with these bridges a long time.

NJ bridges deficient but not dangerous, officials say
by Tom Feeney
Thursday August 02, 2007, 10:08 PM

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger

The Pulaski Skyway, which connects Newark and Jersey City, is considered "structurally deficient."

Six of the eight New Jersey bridges built in the same style as the ill-fated Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis were rated "structurally deficient" the last time they were inspected, according to state and federal transportation officials.

The deficiency designations are a symptom of the advanced age of many New Jersey bridges and of a failure over time to invest to keep up with growing traffic volumes and ever-heavier cars and trucks, officials said.

But the designation does not suggest the bridges are on the verge of collapse, nor does it reflect a significant increase in spending on bridge projects in New Jersey over the past five years, officials said.

"I understand our bridges are inspected regularly and, according to federal standards, while some are considered 'structurally deficient' none are now deemed 'unsafe," Gov. Jon Corzine said in a statement. "Any unsafe bridge would be shut down immediately."

In response to the I-35W bridge collapse, Corzine said he had asked state Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri to make a report to him within 45 days detailing the condition of the 6,420 state, county and local bridges in New Jersey, describing the inspection process and estimating what it would cost to repair them.

The Minneapolis span was known as a "steel truss deck" bridge. There are only 756 of them among the nearly 600,000 bridges in the country.

The eight steel deck truss bridges in New Jersey are very old. The Pulaski Skyway is the newest of them; it was built in 1932. The rest were built between 1895 and 1927, according the FHWA database.

Four of the eight are state bridges: two spans on Route 139 in Jersey City near the approach to the Holland Tunnel, the Pulaski Skyway and the bridge that carries the Route 1&9 truck lanes over the Hackensack River. One of the Route 139 spans is being rebuilt now, and the DOT plans spend $10 million a year over the next 10 years rehabilitating the Pulaski Skyway, Kolluri said. The Skyway work will begin this year.

The other four steel deck truss spans are county bridges - two owned by Hudson County and one each by Somerset and Sussex. Two of those are not considered deficient and one only barely qualifies for the designation.

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