Hackensack, NJ Community Message Boards
General Category => Hackensack Discussion => Topic started by: BLeafe on February 15, 2012, 04:07:09 PM
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It's starting to look a bit like what you see under the Rt 4 Hackensack River bridge.
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Bleaf, I remember the picture you took under the Anderson St Bridge and now this action.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/Bus_detour_in_place_for_Teanecks_Anderson_Street-Cedar_Lane_Bridge.html
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Buses restricted from Teaneck's Anderson Street-Cedar Lane Bridge
Monday, September 24, 2012 Last updated: Monday September 24, 2012, 7:49 PM
BY KAREN ROUSE
STAFF WRITER
The Record
Read NJ Transit's advisory (http://dng.northjersey.com/media_server/tr/2012/09/24teaneck/Bridgedetour.pdf)
NJ Transit was scrambling Monday to re-route buses away from the Anderson Street Bridge that connects Hackensack to Teaneck and notify passengers of detours after Bergen County officials suddenly placed a 15-ton weight limit on the bridge.
A NJ Transit bus weighs 17 or more tons, John Durso, Jr., a spokesman for the agency said late Monday.
“Then you put people on there, it becomes even higher,” he said.
The transit agency was notified Friday that a possible route change would be needed, he said. Then after 3 p.m. on Monday, the county informed NJ Transit that it was moving forward with the weight limit.
County Spokeswoman Jeanne Baratta said the weight restriction is the result of a “directive from the state.”
“The state did their annual review and they said that it’s a priority one bridge, which means it needs extensive repairs,” Baratta said. “In order to answer the state in a timely fashion – and because it has 30,000 to 50,000 cars per day, it’s not a bridge where we could shut the whole thing down.”
Instead, Baratta said the county decided to lower the tonnage permitted across the bridge while design work is done “to see how we’re going to be able to do the repairs and not shut down the bridge.”
Joe Crifasi, director of public works and deputy county administrator for Bergen County, said NJ Transit officials were notified at least a week ago that buses would have to be detoured away from the bridge. He said a consultant from the state Department of Transportation had issued a report on the integrity of the bridge on Sept. 14.
“They found areas throughout the bridge that they deemed necessary for rehabilitation” Crifasi said.
Crifasi said NJ Transit, Hackensack Police and Teaneck Police were all notified. The county also posted signs around the area to warn motorists of the change.
“We let them know about this letter stating that the bridge needed attention and we would be making modification of the traffic pattern,” he said.
The 41-year-old, four-lane bridge is 927 feet long and owned by Bergen County, according to public records.
As of June, it had a sufficiency rating of 54.3 on a scale of 1 to 100. Such a rating puts the bridge in a category of needing rehabilitation.
Joe Dee, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Transportation, said weight restrictions are put in place when the load-carrying capacity drops below a certain level, which could happen for a variety of reasons, including deterioration under the structure. “It could still carry loads, just not as much as it used to,” he said.
He said he did not have specific details on the Anderson Street Bridge late Monday.
Durso said approximately 400 buses cross the bridge on weekdays. The detour will impact roughly 2,000 customers, who can expect delays of at least 10 minutes in each direction due to the detour routing through the Route 4 corridor.
The impacted routes are numbers 83, 157, 168, 175, 178, 182, 751, 753, 755, 772 and 780 are impacted.
Customers that use those routes will need to prepare for the following changes:
ä Buses from Teaneck traveling westbound toward Hackensack (leaving their routes on Cedar Lane at River Road) will travel northbound on River Road to Route 4 West to southbound Hackensack Avenue to Anderson Street at River Street. Buses will then resume their regular routes.
ä Buses from Hackensack traveling eastbound toward Teaneck (leaving their routes on Anderson Street at Hackensack Street will travel northbound on Hackensack Avenue to Route 4 East to southbound River Road in Teaneck. Buses will then resume their regular routes.
Information on NJ Transit detours can be found at www.njtransit.com or by calling 973-275-5555.
Staff Writer John Ensslin contributed to this report. Email: rouse@northjersey.com
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I remember the picture you took under the Anderson St Bridge and now this action.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/Bus_detour_in_place_for_Teanecks_Anderson_Street-Cedar_Lane_Bridge.html
See? If the bridge engineers were smart and paid attention to this board back then, it'd be all fixed by now. ;)
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My mother took these almost 42 years ago, as they were building the current bridge:
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Great pictures. I'm guessing that's from about 1972. Here's the span in 1905:
(http://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2208.0;attach=3710;image)
I'm not sure when the iron-truss span was built but I can't find references prior to 1905. According to George Scudder's Historic Facts about Hackensack, the original wooden bridge (seen in picture below from Arcadia publication) was built in 1858. So:
Wooden Bridge: 1858 to 1905: 47 years.
Iron Bridge: 1905 to 1972: 67 years.
Steel/Concrete Bridge: 1972 to present: 40 years.
Granted, this latest bridge handled more weight and traffic but you would think we'd get at least 75 years. I wonder what the expected life span is.
I have an affinity for this bridge. It was the first bridge I crossed having been born at Holy Name Hospital in July, 1972, though I may have crossed the old span.
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Great pictures. I'm guessing that's from about 1972.
The date is below the pictures: 11-18-70
I have an affinity for this bridge. It was the first bridge I crossed having been born at Holy Name Hospital in July, 1972, though I may have crossed the old span.
It opened in 1971. I had half an affinity for the old bridge: I crossed it twice a day in a Holy Trinity school bus for 8 years, so I was a big fan of it after 3pm.
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Lane Closures Added to Anderson Street Bridge Restrictions (http://teaneck.patch.com/articles/lane-closures-added-to-anderson-street-bridge-restrictions)
By Noah Cohen
Teaneck Patch
September 25, 2012
One lane in each direction on the Anderson Street Bridge was closed Tuesday after a state consultant's inspection found the busy link between Teaneck and Hackensack would need extensive repairs, officials said.
(http://o3.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/PATCH/resize/273x203/http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/patch/17dbef38d603e4b3ce072cc04626a1dd)
The lane closures will remain in place indefinitely, along with a 15-ton weight restriction forcing eleven bus routes to be detoured to Route 4.
Concrete barriers were installed to keep traffic away from weakened areas of the four lane bridge, according to Bergen County Public Works Director Joe Crifasi.
The bridge's condition does not pose a safety risk, but the inspection found the structure was in need of "immediate attention," Crifasi told Patch.
There were no plans for additional closures or detours, Crifasi said. Bergen County, which owns the bridge and is responsible for the project, will await an engineering consultant's report expected within 60 days.
"Once we get the directive from the consultant we'll act immediately on the recommendations," Crifasi said.
Officials could decide to repair sections of the 41-year-old bridge, or replace the entire crossing.
"There's no guide as to how old bridges can be," Crifasi said.
An inspection in June was conducted as part of a regular federally required review of bridges, according to Tim Greeley, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Transportation.
"At least every two years on a cycle every bridge has to be inspected and given a structural rating," Greeley said.
The bridge was labeled "deficient" after a 2006 inspection, a state report showed. That review gave the bridge a 55.8 rating on a scale of 1 to 100, which put it in a category of needing rehabilitation. Updated inspection data was not immediately released.
Jeanne Baratta, chief of staff at the county executive's office, said Monday officials were working to avoid closing the roadway entirely during repairs.
"It is unclear how long the repairs will take as the design phase is ongoing and great emphasis is being placed on the bridge remaining open while repairs are completed," said an e-mail alert issued by Teaneck Tuesday afternoon. "Motorists should consider using an alternate route to avoid area delays."
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If the Anderson Street bridge is going to be replaced, I ask that the Hackensack City Council make a formal request to the County of Bergen that the height be raised so that the Hackensack Waterfront Walkway can pass underneath. The bridge reconstruction should include this segment of walkway, with connection to the existing walkway in Johnson Park. Land has already been set aside at the Spotless Car Wash for the walkway, and it can easily boardwalk in front of the pump station.
This is a good opportunity to eliminate the highest-traffic at-grade crossing for the walkway, and it will make it more feasible to link Johnson & Foschini Parks.
It only needs to be 2 feet higher for that to happen. That was one of the big mistakes with the Court Street bridge, they built it at the same elevation.
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Many Bergen County bridges nearing end of lifespan (http://www.northjersey.com/news/Many_Bergen_County_bridges_nearing_end_of_lifespan.html?page=all)
Sunday, September 30, 2012 Last updated: Sunday September 30, 2012, 9:04 AM
BY JOHN C. ENSSLIN
STAFF WRITER
The Record
Map: Bergen County bridge ratings (http://www.northjersey.com/news/Bergen_County_bridges.html)
The Kingsland Avenue Bridge in Lyndhurst is among 25 in Bergen County classified as 'functionally obsolete' by a rating system used by a national bridge inventory.
Drive over any bridge in Bergen County and there’s a pretty good chance that it either needs major repairs or replacement, according to a national rating system.
The county has 195 bridges, 25 of which have been rated as “functionally obsolete,” meaning that they are candidates for replacement. And 65 others have been rated “structurally deficient,” signifying that major repairs are needed.
But this year, the county will spend just $29 million on bridge repair and reconstruction — a figure that comes nowhere near addressing the amount of work that state inspectors say is needed to return the spans to a state of good repair. For instance, a recent major renovation of a swing-span bridge connecting Hackensack and Bogota cost nearly $20 million.
Until money can be found, steps are being taken to extend the usable life of the bridges — officials just last week imposed a 15-ton weight limit on the East Anderson Avenue Bridge that links Hackensack and Teaneck, forcing NJ Transit to reroute about 400 buses daily.
The fact that nearly half of Bergen County bridges are rated as needing repair or replacement is not surprising, said Andrew Herrmann, a New York engineer who is president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. His group did a national study in 2009 which found that one out of every four of the nation’s nearly 600,000 bridges were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. But Herrmann said that percentage was much higher in the Northeast where bridges tend to be older and are exposed to colder weather with snow and ice.
“Just because a bridge is structurally deficient doesn’t mean that it’s dangerous,” he said. “It just means that it needs to be repaired.”
Freeholder Maura DeNicola, who heads the county’s public works committee, described the situation as “a serious issue, both physically and financially.
“Bergen County is not unlike other counties in New Jersey and in the nation in facing this issue,” said DeNicola, adding that county engineers are working on short- and long-term plans to address the problems. “We’re being as responsible and active as possible.”
Joe Crifasi, the county public works director, said progress is being made on maintaining the spans, but he called it “a daunting task.”
The fact that a bridge is rated as needing to be replaced or repaired does not mean motorists or pedestrians are at risk when they cross it, said County Engineer Joe Femia.
“That doesn’t mean the bridge is unsafe,” said Femia, echoing Herrmann. “It just means it’s approaching a point where we have to start looking at it for rehabilitation or replacement.”
Inspectors for the New Jersey Department of Transportation are required to inspect each bridge in the state every two years as part of a national inventory and rating system that began in January 2005.
The inspections look at a variety of factors including overall structural condition, weight load and traffic volume. They result in a score of 1 to 100. A bridge with a rating of below 50 is considered “functionally obsolete” and a candidate for replacement.
Some of the bridges that once had the lowest ratings in the county have already been rebuilt. For example, the Harold Dillard Memorial Bridge, the swing span that connects Bogota to Hackensack via Court Street, reopened this month after being closed 26 months for work costing $19.8 million, most of it paid by federal and state aid.
When it closed, the Dillard Bridge was considered decrepit and had a rating of 1. That score will come closer to 100 once it is reinspected later this year, Crifasi said.
A bridge with a rating below 80 is considered “structurally deficient” and a candidate for rehabilitation. The Anderson Avenue Bridge, for example, had a rating of 54.3. According to an inspection listed in the 2011 database, its railings and approach guardrails did not meet acceptable standards and the bridge deck was considered to be in poor condition.
Not all of Bergen County’s bridges are rated. Femia explained that’s because some smaller spans were previously considered to be culverts. Those that have been upgraded to bridge status are awaiting inspection.
On the national infrastructure report card that the Society of Civil Engineers issued in 2009, Herrmann said, the nation’s bridges were scored as getting a collective “C” while other kinds of infrastructure got a “D.” The report estimated the cost of bringing all those categories up to a grade of “B” to be $2.2 trillion dollars over five years.
Bergen County will spend $53.6 million on all infrastructure this year, including bridges, culverts, roads and traffic signals. The county has also received $5 million in state grants for five bridge projects in the past three years, said state Department of Transportation spokesman Joseph Dee.
Crifasi said his department is mindful every day of the bridges that have been identified as needing work.
“At no time will public safety ever be compromised,” he said.
He said the bridge rating system also helps accomplish that goal.
“I think the system works because it keeps people from becoming complacent,” he said.
Email: ensslin@northjersey.com
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In case you didn't receive the notification:
Anderson St Bridge Repairs
The City of Hackensack has been advised that Bergen County will begin repairs on the Anderson Street Bridge on or around February 16, 2016. The Bridge will be closed to eastbound traffic for 90 days. Repairs will begin on the westbound side immediately thereafter and will take an additional 60 days.
For additional information:
Bergen County Planning and Engineering
One Bergen County Plaza, Fourth Floor
Hackensack, NJ 07601
201-336-6446
So it should be finished by the middle of July...............oy-vey!
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http://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php?topic=3259.msg10861;boardseen#new
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http://www.northjersey.com/news/transportation/repairs-scheduled-for-bridge-1.1513294
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http://www.northjersey.com/news/kelly-who-pays-the-price-1.1515699?page=all
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http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/03/how_bad_are_nj_bridges_8th_worst_in_us_government.html
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After lunch yesterday, I was looking for a quick photo project and decided to see what work was being done on the Anderson St Bridge.
I started from Johnson Park where I ducked under the bridge's NW corner. I didn't expect to see any actiivity on the north side because the bridge is closed to traffic on the south side, but if you look REAL close on the far left of the first picture, you may be able to see a guy at the far end of the bridge, who's standing on a wooden platform that's a couple of feet above the water............OR you could just look at the second picture and see that he's sawing concrete while cars are rolling by above.
If one guy's working on the open side, there's gotta be a bunch of people working on the closed side, right? So I crossed Anderson St (3) to go on the little walkway behind the car wash and the liquor store. I got in about 20' when I came upon a locked gate. Didn't matter - I was far enough in to shoot the downstairs bridge activity (4), except there wasn't any. So I walked across the bridge on the south side. I expected it to be closed, but it was wide open.
There were 5 or 6 of these cuts in the pavement (5), but I chose this one because a bus was crossing on the other side. Weren't buses banned from the span?
Picture 6 shows lots of stuff, but there were no workers there. If you look to the right - just under the "Welcome to Teaneck" sign, you can see the top of the ladder you saw in Picture 4. Picture 7 is a closeup of it.
After I got past the "Welcome to Teaneck" sign, I took a quick right past a gate to get on the Teaneck walkway. I had to get through a bunch of thorn bushes to get to the riverbank to get the next 3 shots. Two of them show a worker cutting concrete, but it's the same worker I saw 10 minutes prior on the north side. That one guy was the entire labor force that was present when I was there.
When I got back on Cedar Lane, I took a final picture facing Hackensack. Oh, look - there's a sign that says that the south sidewalk is closed!
Click to enlarge.
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So the bridge is now open Teaneck-bound and closed Hackensack-bound (1).
From the south walkway (again), I shot what's going on now on the roadway yesterday (2,3) and it's basically the reverse of what was happening in the previous post. Shocker, huh?
Ho-hum............film at 11.
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I found a bunch of signs in Johnson Park near Anderson St.
While I was there, I checked out the underside of the bridge for the latest artwork.
Click to make BEEG.
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https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/john-cichowski/2018/05/07/could-bridge-ann-kelly-speed-up-nj-bridge-repairs/575789002/
But relief isn't expected for years. So far, Bergen hasn't found a funding source.