Author Topic: Midtown Bridge (William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge)  (Read 14005 times)

Offline Editor

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Midtown Bridge (William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge)
« on: October 22, 2013, 11:05:39 PM »
Span linking Bogota and Hackensack shut down due to structural issues
Tuesday October 22, 2013, 9:07 PM
BY  JIM NORMAN
STAFF WRITER
The Record

The 113-year-old Midtown Bridge, a heavily traveled link across the Hackensack River between Bogota and Hackensack, has been shut down because of structural issues, authorities said Tuesday.


MARKO GEORGIEV / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Bogota Borough Council President Tito Jackson in Hackensack by the Midtown Bridge, now closed to traffic. The bridge is likely to remain closed for at least 10 days while engineers decide the extent of the deterioration that was detected, said Tito Jackson, the Bogota borough council president who spotted the problem when he drove across the 315-foot span.

Jackson said the bridge has long been slated for replacement, “but then we had trouble on the Cedar Lane bridge and that had to be limited to one lane in each direction, so that put the Midtown Bridge on hold.”

The bridge at the western end of Cedar Lane in Teaneck, actually called the Anderson Street Bridge, has had a 15-ton weight limit on it since September 2012 because of serious structural deficiencies.

As a result, about 400 buses that used the bridge each day have had to be detoured. In addition, the bridge has been reduced from two lanes to one in each direction.

Jackson said late last week he felt the Midtown Bridge “shaking as I drove across, so I parked my car and walked across and saw metal sticking up from the deck at both ends.”

Jackson, who also serves as Bogota’s Office of Emergency Management coordinator, said he reported his findings to the borough administrator, August Greiner, who called county engineers. The engineers ordered the steel truss bridge closed for inspection, Jackson said.

The closure puts extra pressure on the recently reopened Court Street Bridge to the south, which went through a complete rebuilding that took two years, and on the Anderson Street Bridge to the north.

“The Midtown Bridge took a beating for a couple of years when the Court Street Bridge was closed,” Jackson said. “We really kind of beat up the span.”

Jackson said he did not know how long the bridge might remain closed if extensive repairs are necessary. If the steel grid deck needs to be replaced, he said, it could take a long time.

“We don’t make that kind of decking locally,” he said. “We’d have to order it from a company in Ohio.”

In 1998, engineers from the county Department of Public Works closed the bridge for several weeks for emergency repairs after workers detected a problem with the structure's steel joints. Robert Mulder, a county engineer at the time, described the situation as "an ongoing problem that needs to be permanently fixed."

Although most people know it as the Midtown Bridge, the span’s name was formally changed in 1978 to the William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge, for a Marine Corps pilot from Bogota who was killed in Vietnam in 1969.

Email: norman@northjersey.com



Offline Editor

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Re: Midtown Bridge (William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge)
« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2013, 08:46:15 PM »
Bogota's Midtown Bridge undergoing repairs
Thursday October 31, 2013, 10:47 AM
BY  MARK KRULISH
STAFF WRITER
Bogota Bulletin

BOGOTA - The Midtown Bridge that connects Bogota to Hackensack has been shut down since Oct. 17 due to structural concerns.


MARKO GEORGIEV/THE RECORD
Bogota Borough Council President Tito Jackson poses for a photo by the Midtown Bridge, which has been closed for traffic in Hackensack since Oct. 17. The problem was originally reported by Council President Tito Jackson, who is also Bogota's Office of Emergency Management coordinator. He said that as he was driving over the bridge he noticed a large separation in the decking and that there was metal sticking up on both ends of the bridge. He stopped to inspect it and immediately notified Borough Administrator Chip Greiner.

Greiner said that he reached out to Bergen County Public Works operations division. The county sent engineers down and, after inspection, they said that the bridge needed to be closed because it was unsafe.

Jackson said that the engineers had to replace the joints on each side of the bridge and the metal decking on both ends because it is a safety hazard as the decking sticks up "quite a few inches."

"It's a substantial repair that is going on over there," said Jackson. "All of the parts are there for replacement; it's just a labor-intensive job to replace the decking on both ends."

The damage sustained to the bridge can be somewhat attributed to the extra traffic that it saw while the Court Street Bridge was closed. Jackson said that the bridge took a beating, as all of the traffic and bus routes that normally run on Court Street were diverted to the Midtown Bridge, which is the only other thoroughfare that spans the Hackensack River between Bogota and Hackensack.

The Midtown Bridge is a 113-year-old structure that was originally a trolley line that ran from Hackensack through Leonia. The steel decking currently on the bridge was put down in the late 1930s.

Bergen County engineers have a plan in place to replace the entire Midtown Bridge, a project which Jackson said should go out to bid in the summer of 2014. The new bridge will have a concrete deck as opposed to the steel deck that is currently there. Jackson estimated that the project would result in the closure of the Midtown Bridge for approximately six to nine months. However, the county is also having issues with the Anderson Street Bridge in Teaneck, so there is no exact timetable for when such a project might occur. Jackson said that the county will have to determine which bridge needs to be replaced first.

"It is a county road, it's under Bergen County's jurisdiction, so it is for them to deal with," said Jackson. "I asked them to keep us in the loop, but it's their project."

The bridge was not yet open as of press deadline, but borough officials were hopeful that the bridge would reopen by the weekend of Nov. 1. However, no guarantees were made.

Krulish@northjersey.com

Offline irons35

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Re: Midtown Bridge (William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge)
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2013, 03:25:49 PM »
just opened now

Offline BLeafe

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Offline BLeafe

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Midtown Bridge to be replaced
« Reply #5 on: April 11, 2017, 05:45:46 PM »
Looks like the artillery is in place.


CLICKit!



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Offline BLeafe

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Re: Midtown Bridge (William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge)
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2017, 09:52:13 AM »
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Offline BLeafe

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Marine 1st Lt. William C. Ryan, Jr was buried yesterday, just hours after his wife's funeral service. She had waited 48 years and received word that his remains had been found in January, just before she learned that she had stage-four cancer.


http://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/christopher-maag/2017/05/11/garden-state-mind-missing-48-years-bogota-marine-buried-arlington/315606001/

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Offline BLeafe

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Re: Midtown Bridge to be replaced
« Reply #8 on: July 09, 2017, 06:20:40 PM »
The views from Bogota and Hackensack and the original truss' stone center pier:


Click it.



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Offline BLeafe

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Re: Midtown Bridge (William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge)
« Reply #9 on: September 10, 2017, 04:04:46 PM »
I couldn't get any close shots because it was a workday (I usually do that on weekends). I wanted to see if any sort of a span was put in place yet, but I could see from Foschini Park that there wasn't.

If anyone is aware of when span placement will occur, kindly let me know so I can shoot it.


Click to enlarge.



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Offline BLeafe

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Late News: Midtown Bridge has re-opened
« Reply #10 on: April 23, 2018, 09:05:01 PM »
"Late" because it's been open for over a week. It was rededicated on Saturday, as you can see in the sign in the second pic.

At first glance, I wondered why the green plastic mesh was there. While walking across the bridge, you can see all sorts of openings where the metal design pops up through the sidewalk. You could get your foot caught in it, small children could get stuck between the design and the green guardrails..............I'm guessing that it could be a source of many potential problems.

The guy in the last picture looks a little disappointed, but I'm probably just projecting.

Click to enlarge.


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Offline johnny g

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Re: Midtown Bridge (William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge)
« Reply #11 on: April 24, 2018, 07:36:08 AM »
Disappointed he's only making $35 per hour instead of $39?  :-*

Offline ericmartindale

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Re: Midtown Bridge (William C. Ryan Memorial Bridge)
« Reply #12 on: April 25, 2018, 07:55:09 PM »
That's ANOTHER bridge rebuilt without raising it for pedestrian riverfront access to pass underneath.