Content area
Full Text
The discovery of deep cracks in the floor beams of the ManhattanBridge forced the city yesterday to close a center lane of the East River span and ban Manhattan-bound truck and bus traffic. "It's really too horrible to contemplate," city Transportation Commissioner Ross Sandler said. "Nothing is going to happen tomorrow. But if left undiscovered and unrepaired, the bridge floor would fall into the river when the girders broke."
This was the second time in two years that unexpected structural problems have shut down part of the 78year-old bridge, which has seven traffic lanes and four subway tracks.
Two of the subway tracks and two traffic lanes have been closed on the bridge's upriver side since April, 1986, when corrosion was found in the steel bars that anchor one of the bridge's four cables.
Yesterday, the city Department of Transportation also banned all trucks and buses from the bridge's center roadway and reduced its capacity from three lanes to two. The restrictions are designed to decrease loading on the main span from 108 tons to 18 tons.
The restrictions were ordered after engineering inspectors on Wednesday night discovered cracks, some as deep as 15 inches, in 20 of the 37-inch-thick steel girders that hold up the center roadway.
The state Department of Transportation negotiated an emergency contract with American Bridge, a division of USX, the former U.S. Steel Corp., to work from "sunup to sundown seven days a week for a month" to repair the cracks. The city has agreed to bear the full $750,000 cost of the work, which requires about 40 iron workers...