The Verrazano Bridge Project

It’s been said that today capitalism isn’t as interested in making stuff as it is in making money. At a time when our economy is struggling to lower the unemployment rate, move forward and climb out of the hole the Republicans had been digging for the past 30 years, New York has taken a great leap backward.

When it opened in 1964, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was the world's longest suspension span. The ends of the bridge are at historic Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn and Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island, both of which guarded New York Harbor at the Narrows for over a century. The bridge was named after Giovanni da Verrazano, who, in 1524, was the first European explorer to sail into New York Harbor.

Its monumental 693 foot high towers are 1 5/8 inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases because the 4,260 foot distance between them made it necessary to compensate for the earth's curvature. Each tower weighs 27,000 tons and is held together with three million rivets and one million bolts. Seasonal contractions and expansions of the steel cables cause the double-decked roadway to be 12 feet lower in the summer than in the winter. Located at the mouth of upper New York Bay, the bridge not only connects Brooklyn with Staten Island but is also a major link in the interstate highway system, providing the shortest route between the middle Atlantic states and Long Island.

In Brooklyn, the bridge connects to the Belt Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and to the largely residential community of Bay Ridge. On Staten Island, which saw rapid development after the bridge opened in 1964, it joins the Staten Island Expressway, providing access to the many communities in this most rural of the city's five boroughs.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge that connects the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn in New York City at the Narrows, the reach connecting the relatively protected upper bay with the larger lower bay.

The bridge is named for both the Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazano, the first known European navigator in the service of the King Francis I of France to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River, and for the body of water it spans: the Narrows. It has a central span of 4,260 feet (1,298 m) and was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its completion in 1964, until it was surpassed by the Humber Bridge in the United Kingdom in 1981, a bridge connecting the (then) counties of North and South Humberside, now renamed North Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire. It now has the tenth longest main span in the world, is still the longest bridge span in the Americas, and its massive towers can be seen throughout a good part of the New York metropolitan area, including from spots in all five boroughs of New York City and in New Jersey.

The bridge establishes a critical link in the local and regional highway system. Since 1976, it has been the starting point of the New York City Marathon. The bridge marks the gateway to New York Harbor; all cruise ships and most container ships arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey must pass underneath the bridge and therefore must be built to accommodate the clearance under the bridge. This is most notable in the case of the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary 2.

The agency says it could not find an American company capable of making the high-tech steel plates it wants, but critics say the decision came down to cheaper labor. Add Staten Island’s Verrazano Bridge to the list of U.S. icons that are made in China.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority outsourced a $235 million renovation project to China for work on the statuesque steel span — over the protests of hard-up American steelworkers who say they could do the job. “It’s a kick in the teeth. There’s a lot of New Yorkers who would be thrilled to work on this project. It should be American made,” United Steelworkers’ Vice President Tom Conway said. The union has reached out to New York’s AFL-CIO to mobilize support among other labor organizations, the Daily News has learned.

“Our state has lost nearly half its manufacturing capacity in the past 20 years,” AFL-CIO head Mario Cilento said in a letter sent July 1 to its executive council. Cilento wrote, asking members to “stand by” as they prepare to fight the MTA’s outsourced contract. According to the MTA, there’s not a steel plant in America that can produce the type of high-tech steel plate it wants — known as orthotropic design. “(The agency) worked diligently to find an American steel manufacturer with the capability, experience and desire to fabricate the steel bridge deck ... the MTA could not find an American fabricator,” the agency said in a statement defending its decision.

Orthotropic Design

Orthotropic design is rarely used in America because the bulk of U.S. bridges were built before the technology existed. The MTA hopes to extend the Verrazano’s lifespan by replacing its heavy concrete upper deck with lighter, stiffer orthotropic plates. Similar work was done two years ago on another U.S. span, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

First developed in the 1930s, the orthotropic steel deck (OSD) system for bridges continues to offer tremendous potential for building efficient and cost-effective modern structures with extended service life.

The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) new Manual for Design, Construction, and Maintenance of Orthotropic Steel Deck Bridges (Pub. No. FHWA-IF-12-027) presents a comprehensive guide to OSD technology based on worldwide practice and modern analytical techniques. Included are discussion of the many aspects of orthotropic bridge engineering, including analysis, design, detailing, fabrication, testing, inspection, evaluation, and repair. The manual supplements and updates the 1963 Design Manual for Orthotropic Steel Plate Deck Bridges published by the American Institute of Steel Construction. It is based on the recently issued Sixth Edition of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) Bridge Design Specifications.

“Orthotropic steel decks provide a modular, prefabricated design solution that has proven effective in new construction where speed and extended service life are desired, and in rehabilitation of existing bridges where reducing weight is one of the primary goals,” said Myint Lwin, Director of FHWA’s Office of Bridge Technology. Originally developed in Germany, the OSD system generally consists of a flat, thin steel plate that is stiffened by a series of closely spaced longitudinal ribs and transverse floor beam, as noted in the manual, “the defining characteristic of the OSD bridge is that it results in a nearly all steel superstructure which has the potential (with minimal maintenance) to provide extended service life and standardized modular design, as compared to more conventional bridge construction.” Since most of the components are prefabricated and lightweight, OSD bridges can be built quickly. OSD construction also provides a smooth continuous riding surface that has minimal joints, preventing leakage and protecting the other bridge components. Another potential advantage is lower life-cycle costs.

The OSD system has been used in thousands of bridges worldwide, particularly in Europe, Asia, and South America. It has not been as widely employed in the United States to date, with an estimated 100 OSD bridges in service across the country. The system has most commonly been used in the United States for particular design conditions, such as for long-span structures where it is paramount to minimize dead load. One example of this design is the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington. Another use in the United States is for box girder bridges containing slender compressive plate elements that require stiffening, such as the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge in California. It has also been used for redecking of major bridges on urban arterials where rapid construction is vital, including the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in New York City.

The Tacoma Narrows first developed in the 1930s, the orthotropic steel deck (OSD) system for bridges continues to offer tremendous potential for building efficient and cost-effective modern structures with extended service life.

Originally developed in Germany, the OSD system generally consists of a flat, thin steel plate that is stiffened by a series of closely spaced longitudinal ribs and transverse floor beam, as noted in the manual, “the defining characteristic of the OSD bridge is that it results in a nearly all steel superstructure which has the potential (with minimal maintenance) to provide extended service life and standardized modular design, as compared to more conventional bridge construction.” Since most of the components are prefabricated and lightweight, OSD bridges can be built quickly. OSD construction also provides a smooth continuous riding surface that has minimal joints, preventing leakage and protecting the other bridge components. Another potential advantage is lower life-cycle costs.

A German Engineer Dr. Cornelius of MAN Corporation was issued German patent No. 847014 in 1948. MAN's design manual was published in 1957 in German. In 1963 AISC published their manual based on North American design practices today called AASHTO. First used in Germany in the 1950s, orthotropic technology facilitated the cost-effective replacement of bridges destroyed during World War II. Today, Japan is home to the world's longest suspension, floating, and cable-stayed orthotropic deck bridges. In fact, major orthotropic viaducts in Tokyo are composed of more than 1,100 spans, and there are more than 250 orthotropic deck bridges of various sizes throughout the country.

Despite their popularity overseas, the percentage of orthotropic decks constructed in the United States remains low. But that may be about to change. Orthotropic structures have earned the trust of a few American bridge designers and owners who are pushing the technology forward. In fact, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and many other organizations recently sponsored the world's first conference in nearly 30 years focused exclusively on orthotropic deck bridges.

When first introduced in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, orthotropic decks represented a new and relatively unfamiliar technology for bridge designers. As a result of inadequate knowledge about the performance characteristics, particularly in regard to fatigue and traffic loading, early designers created bridges that were too light and tended to crack in the welds under repeated use by trucks. An experimental bridge built in the 1960s in Maryland, for example, only lasted a few years. The problem, according to Fisher, was that not enough experimentation had been carried out to define the details.

"Designers had bad experiences with early applications, using deck plates that were too thin," Fisher says. "In the United States, we were using thicknesses of 10 to 12 millimeters [0.39 to 0.47 inch], which is too thin to carry the wheel loads of heavy trucks. Many bridge decks failed, and that turned off owners." Over the years, however, research in this country and abroad has helped engineers develop a more substantial base of knowledge and data on the performance of orthotropic bridges. According to Benjamin Tang, with FHWA's Office of Bridge Technology, current research on bridge performance indicates that stiffer orthotropic decks with wider ribs, along with prototype testing, could result in good performance and long bridge life.

The Golden Gate Bridge now has an orthotropic deck. In the early 1980s, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge was in need of a tuneup. Completed in 1937, the landmark bridge spanning the bay between San Francisco and Marin County, CA, began to show signs of deterioration in its concrete deck. Salt fog had reached the rebar, causing corrosion and concrete spalling. Engineers at the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District made the decision to switch deck systems. In 1985, with assistance from construction engineers at the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the Golden Gate Bridge was restored using steel deck panels. The project not only restored the bridge to prime condition but also used fewer materials and reduced the deck weight by 11,160 metric tons (12,300 tons).

The unsung hero in the retrofit is orthotropic technology. Engineers define an orthotropic deck as one that consists of steel plates supported by ribs underneath, overlain by an integrated wearing (driving) surface. An orthotropic deck is a collage of steel plates welded together with a flat, solid steel deck stiffened by a grid of deck ribs welded to framing members like floor beams and girders. By integrating the structural system and the driving surface, orthotropic deck bridges are more lightweight and efficient on long-span structures.

A staple feature in transportation networks in Europe and East Asia, these bridges also are valued for their seismic performance, maneuverability (as in movable bridges), and versatility for construction in cold weather.

Some very large cable-supported bridges, plus current record span (cable-stayed bridges and suspension bridges) would not be feasible without steel orthotropic decks. The longest or record span box girder, slant-leg bridges; arch bridges; movable bridges and two Norwegian floating bridges. (The steel deck-plate-and-ribs system may be idealized for analytical purposes as an orthogonal-anisotropic plate, hence the abbreviated designation “orthotropic.”) Thousands of orthotropic deck bridges are in existence throughout the world. Despite the savings and advantages (up to 25% of total bridge mass can be saved by reducing deck weight, as the weight reductions extend to cables, towers, piers, anchorages, and so forth), the US has only about 60 such bridge decks in use as of late 2005. About 25% of USA Orthotropic Steel Deck Bridges are in California, including the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge box girder(1967) one of the first major bridges in the US to be built using an orthotropic deck.

Rebuilding Infrastructure

The MTA action is a strategic blunder. It is driving the fatal stake through the heart of what was a world leading steel industry. Economic treason is another word for it. Snowden did not profit from his activities, the MTA motivation for this is profit. The largest bridge in the United States should be built with steel produced in the United States for strategic reasons that seem to have escaped MTA, Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo, the New York/New Jersey Congressional delegations, and the President of the United States, Barack Obama. Indeed many bridges throughout the United States are parts of the infrastructure that needs repair. Would an intelligent administration promising to create jobs and revitalize the economy by rebuilding the infrastructure then allow a local transportation agency to give the contract for the nation's largest bridge to a foreign country?

New York Sen. Charles Schumer urged the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to avoid using steel from state-owned Chinese enterprises on future projects. Schumer was responding to criticism over the MTA's announcement that it would be using steel from Angang Steel (Ansteel) Group, a state-owned company in China, to make repairs along the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Angang Steel Company Limited or Ansteel is a joint-stock limited company parented by Anshan Iron and Steel Group, which is supervised by State Council of the People's Republic of China. It is the second largest steel maker in Mainland China.

Ansteel is engaged in producing and selling steel products as billets, cold rolled sheets, color coating plates, wire rods, thick plates and heavy rails. It was incorporated in 1997 when Anshan Iron and Steel injected its cold rolling, wire rod, and thick plate operations into Ansteel. Ansteel is headquartered in Anshan, Liaoning, China.

Schumer said China heavily subsidizes its steel industry, which makes Chinese steel artificially cheap and allows them to undercut American competitors by up to 25 percent. "While we are appreciative of the tight budget constraints that MTA is subject to on public works projects, we believe that supporting state-owned enterprises such as Ansteel is in direct conflict with the best interest of the U.S. economy and in the future MTA should exercise all power within their authority to avoid this outcome," Schumer wrote in a letter to MTA CEO and Chairman Thomas Prendergast.

The Democratic senator also wants the MTA to alter its bidding process and to provide advance notice on future projects so that American companies can better compete.