Bayonne Bridge road deck raising project delayed

Due to construction challenges and severe 2014 winter weather, the deck raising will now be completed in late 2017, with entire project to be completed in mid 2019, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.    Container carriers will now have to wait until the fall of 2017 to get larger ships into most of the terminals in the Port of New York and New Jersey, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
   The port authority on Thursday announced a revised timeline for completing the raising of the road deck of the Bayonne Bridge between Staten Island and New Jersey.
   The port is raising the roadway of the bridge from 151 to 215 feet above the Kill Van Kull so that taller, post-panamax containerships can safely sail under it and reach container terminals on Staten Island, and in Elizabeth and Newark, New Jersey.
   The raising of the roadway of the Bayonne Bridge waterway is being done, in large measure, because of the larger ships that are expected to call East Coast ports from Asia because of the larger locks being built at the Panama Canal. The new locks are expected to be completed in April 2016.
   The lower roadway is now expected to be demolished by late 2017 and the entire project completed some time in 2019.
   The port authority blamed the latest delay primarily on construction challenges and the harsh 2014 winter, adding that it could potentially increase total project costs by approximately 15 percent.
   The “Raise the Roadway” project involves constructing a bridge roadway deck above the existing roadway, while ensuring limited disruption to traffic on the lower deck. Given the Bayonne Bridge’s architectural significance, the project will maintain the integrity of the original historic design that made the 84-year-old span a civil engineering landmark. The lower roadway will then be demolished. An animated video showing how the project will be accomplished can be viewed on the Port Authority’s website.
   “Although a number of challenges have impacted the project’s timetable, we continue to monitor the Skanska JV’s (the project’s construction is being handled by a joint venture of Skanska Koch and Kiewit Infrastructure Co.) construction progress and, together with Skanska JV, anticipate completion within the schedule announced today,” Pat Foye, the executive director of the port authority said in a statement.
   Michael Cobelli, president and CEO of Skanska Civil Inc., added, “We are confident that we will complete the Bayonne Bridge’s ‘Raise the Roadway’ project within the revised timetable. This has been a challenging project, but we have committed the resources to complete it successfully, with full awareness of how vitally important it is for the regional economy.”
   Currently, construction on the “Raise the Roadway” project is almost 50 percent complete, with an estimated $380 million worth of construction in place.
   The timetable for the bridge project has been revised several times.
   Originally, the deck was expected to be removed in mid-2016. Then in July 2012, the agency said it thought the deck would be removed in the fall of 2015. Last September, the Star-Ledger newspaper reported that six months had been added to the schedule and that the deck would be removed next summer, but today’s announcement appears to add at least a year to that estimate.
   Only one major container terminal in the Port of New York and New Jersey, GCT Bayonne, can currently be reached without passing under the Bayonne Bridge.