The new bridge connecting Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx will replace a span that opened in 1901 and carries more than 70,000 vehicles a day. The existing Willis Avenue Bridge will remain open to traffic as the new span is floated into place atop foundations and piers.
The new bridge was built for the transportation department at a privately owned port in Coeymans, near Albany. Two weeks ago, a marine transportation crew loaded the finished span onto the barges, which were welded together for the 130-mile trip down the Hudson River to a dock in Bayonne, N.J.
Yesterday, the span was hauled from Bayonne 15 miles north through the East River to its final destination.
The last leg of the journey was via the East River because the load’s height, 82 feet from the barges’ decks to the bridge’s top crossbeam, was too tall for the low bridges over the narrow Harlem River.
Getting 4.8 million pounds of steel onto the barges two weeks ago required four 50-foot-long steel ramps connecting the vessels’ decks to the docks. The move was timed to the peak of high tide. The 4 1/2-hour process involved precise measuring of the height of the tide and pumping ballast water through the barges to keep them level with the dock.
All the heavy lifting was carried out by a crew from Mammoet, a Dutch company that specializes in moving extraordinarily large objects.
