Bayonne Bridge

Bayonne Bridge is an arch bridge spanning the Kill Van Kull and connecting Bayonne, New Jersey with Staten Island in New York City. It carries New York State Route 440 (NY 440) and New Jersey Route 440. It is the sixth-longest steel arch bridge in the world, and it was the longest in the world at the time of its completion. The bridge is also one of four connecting New Jersey with Staten Island; the other two roadway bridges are the Goethals Bridge in Elizabeth and Outerbridge Crossing (which also carries Route 440) in Perth Amboy, and the rail-only span is the Arthur Kill Vertical Lift Bridge, all of which cross the Arthur Kill.

The original roadway carried two lanes of motor traffic in each direction, as well as a walkway. Completed in 1931, the Bayonne Bridge was built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which still operates the bridge. It was designed by Swiss master bridge-builder Othmar Ammann and architect Cass Gilbert.

A project to provide increased clearance required to accommodate New Panamax ships began in 2013, and was completed in two stages between 2017 and 2019. The new roadways each carry two lanes of unidirectional motor traffic plus shoulders for disabled vehicles in addition to a separate path for pedestrians and bicyclists, which opened on May 24, 2019. The desired navigational clearance was achieved June 8, 2017.

Design

Bayonne Bridge was designed by Swiss master bridge-builder Othmar Ammann and architect Cass Gilbert. It spans the Kill Van Kull between Port Richmond in Staten Island, New York, and Bayonne in Hudson County, New Jersey. The bridge was constructed at a 58-degree angle to the Kill Van Kull, parallel to the street networks of both Bayonne and Port Richmond, Staten Island, requiring a longer span than if the bridge had been built perpendicular to the Kill Van Kull. The total length of the bridge is .

Roadbed

As built, the Bayonne Bridge contained a roadbed long without intermediary piers. The main span was connected to viaducts at either end. The Port Richmond viaduct was long and the Bayonne viaduct was long, supported by piers that ranged from tall. The bridge originally featured a mid-span clearance above the water of in order to make room for the United States Navy's tallest ships at the time. The roadway was wide.

Between 2013 and 2019, the bridge's clearance was raised approximately , from . A new roadway was constructed above the existing roadway within the current arch structure. This new clearance was to accommodate Post-Panamax ships.

Arch

The Bayonne Bridge's arch resembles a parabola, but is made up of 40 linear segments. The lower chord of the arch rises above the Kill Van Kull, while the upper chord is above the waterway. The design of the steel arch is influenced by the Hell Gate Bridge, also in New York City, designed by Ammann's mentor Gustav Lindenthal. Gilbert had designed an ornamental granite sheathing over the steelwork as part of the original proposal, but as in the case of the George Washington Bridge, the stone sheathing was eliminated in order to lower the cost of the bridge due to material shortages during the Great Depression, leaving the steel trusses exposed on both bridges. It was the first bridge to employ manganese steel for the main arch ribs and rivets.

When completed in 1931, the Bayonne Bridge was the longest through arch bridge in the world. The Bayonne Bridge surpassed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, its more massive-arched "sister bridge" in Australia, by and took the distinction from the Hell Gate Bridge. The Bayonne Bridge has a lightweight design, weighing only , compared to the Sydney Harbour Bridge's . The Bayonne Bridge is also half as wide and shorter than its sister bridge.

History

Planning and construction

In 1921, the Port of New York Authority (now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) was created to oversee transportation in the Port of New York and New Jersey. At the time, bridges in New York City were being built at a brisk pace. The Port Authority opened its first two bridges between New Jersey and Staten Island in 1928: the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing. A third crossing was being planned between Port Richmond and Bayonne. All three bridges were built to complement the traffic from a future fourth bridge or a tunnel from Staten Island to Brooklyn. Initially, the third crossing was proposed to be a tunnel. However, the Port Authority ultimately decided to construct a bridge, to be designed by Ammann and Gilbert. Ammann, who was chief architect of the Port Authority, chose the steel arch design after rejecting a cantilever and suspension design as expensive and impractical for the site, given a requirement by the Port Authority that the bridge must be able to accommodate the future addition of rapid transit tracks.

Construction on the bridge began in 1928. At the time, it was supposed to be open in early 1932 and was supposed to cost $16 million (), but it ended up costing only $13 million to build (). The bridge had to be built without blocking shipping traffic on the Kill Van Kull. To do this, engineers used hydraulic jacks to support the two sides of the arch while the two pieces, consisting of prefabricated truss segments that were made up of high-strength alloy steel, were being built toward a point in a middle. Afterward, prefabricated pieces of the roadway's support structure were hung from cables connected to the arch.

Operation

The Bayonne Bridge opened on November 15, 1931, after dedication ceremonies were held the previous day. On opening day, about 7,000 pedestrians and 17,000 vehicles crossed the bridge. The new crossing was expected to reduce Staten Islanders' average commutes by an average of 18 to 20 minutes, reducing the need to use the Goethals Bridge or Outerbridge Crossing. The Bayonne Bridge's dedication ceremony was attended by David M. Dow, the Secretary for Australia in the United States, and the same pair of golden shears used to cut the ribbon was sent to Australia for the ribbon-cutting of the Sydney Harbour Bridge four months later. After the ceremony in Sydney, the scissor blades were separated and one was sent back to the Port Authority. ''Time'' referred to the symmetric detail of the bridge as "impressive and haunting," while the commune of Bayonne in France sent a congratulatory telegram. The American Institute for Steel Construction selected the Bayonne Bridge as the "Most Beautiful Steel Bridge" in 1931, choosing it over the George Washington Bridge for that status.

Between 1939 and 1942, during World War II, the space under the Bayonne Bridge's Staten Island approach became the Archer Daniels Midland Manhattan Project Storage Site, utilized for storing uranium. The material was used in the nuclear weapons developed during the Manhattan Project, and about 2,007 barrels weighing were stored under the bridge. Due to the long half-life and high radioactivity of unrefined uranium ore, the site became highly polluted and was later designated a federal Superfund site.

In 1951, twenty years after the bridge opened, the New Jersey tollbooth was re-landscaped by the Port Authority and the City of Bayonne, and in 1956, some land under the New Jersey approach viaduct was set aside to create the Juliette Street Playground. The Bergen Point Ferry, which paralleled the bridge, stayed in service until 1961. A new toll plaza in Staten Island was created in 1964 and made into one-way operation in 1970, with tolls only being collected for vehicles entering the island. The bridge became a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1985.

Roadbed-raising project

In the 2000s, the Port Authority started planning on a project to allow larger container ships to use the Kill Van Kull. The expansion of the Panama Canal allowed large ships coming from Asia to reach the East Coast, but the bridge was too low for these larger ships to pass under it on the way to and from Newark Bay. Its clearance of between above the Kill Van Kull depending on the tide already meant that some contemporary ships, which could reach above the waterline, had to fold down antenna masts, take on ballast, or wait for low tide to pass through.

New, larger New Panamax ships made things worse. If the problem were not fixed, the Port of New York and New Jersey could have lost significant shipping business to other ports such as Charleston, South Carolina