Metro-North begins bridge cable replacement project

Written by Jenifer Nunez, assistant editor

Starting September 15, crews will begin work at the Harlem River Lift Bridge in New York to replace 60-year-old cables that lift the bridge and install all new electrical components designed to increase their resiliency to potential storm surge flooding.

 

The railroad bridge, located about 4.5 miles north of Grand Central Terminal, connects Manhattan to the Bronx.

“This vital bridge is used by more than 280,000 Metro-North customers on 700 trains each weekday,” said Metro-North President Joseph Giulietti. “This project will improve the reliability, efficiency and safety of the bridge and allow us to meet our obligation to keep the bridge’s moving parts moving.”

In addition to replacement of all the original cables that lift the two, 340-foot-long, three million pound spans, the project includes a new electrical control system and wiring and a new third rail power supply system. The new facility house electrical components, damaged during Superstorm Sandy, will be installed to increase their resiliency to potential storm surge flooding, due to a $5-million federal Sandy Emergency Relief grant.

Outdated electro-mechanical controls will be replaced and computerized with the installation of a dual-redundant, programmable logic control system. The elevators from the track level up to the operator’s rooms at the counterweight level also will be rehabilitated. New multi-conductor, copper and fiber optic cables will be pulled through a micro-tunnel under the Harlem River that was bored under a prior capital program.
The entire $47-million project is being paid for by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 2010-2014 Capital Program with help from federal grants of $24 million (including the $5 million Sandy grant).

 

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