Mr. Krenek, who works for Skanska USA (the outside firm managing the project), explained that, “we’ve obviously been working on this steel structure for quite some time, but when we started in the middle of the summer to move to the next phase of fabrication, we had to cut into some of the existing welds to tie in the next section.”
He continued, “as we did that, we noticed that there was a non-conforming weld that was actually on these pieces of steel. It’s not every single piece of steel that we have. It’s select ones that had a specific type of ‘fillet weld’ that was done in a specific orientation. There’s a teeny, tiny pinhole that showed up in this process.”
“We did a bunch of tests,” he added, “and went through a bunch of different agencies and experts and inspectors. And it was determined that this may have an effect on the overall lifespan of the bridge.”
“This process, before any production welding was done, was tested by third-party agencies,” Mr. Krenek recounted. “It was destructively tested, and cut up. And it was approved by the agencies and parties necessary to allow us to do this welding, to prevent this from happening. We do all the due diligence ahead of time, to prevent something like this from occurring. Unfortunately, it did occur.”
“There is no concern about the strength of the bridge,” he noted, because, “we did a couple of destructive tests, where we actually pulled the pieces of steel apart. And the steel that is actually making up the bridge is pretty much the highest-strength steel you can buy. And that broke first, before the weld. But we decided collectively, as a group, that these welds needed to be corrected.”
“That is currently ongoing,” Mr. Krenek observed. “We are doing our due diligence to make sure that the lifespan of the bridge is what it was designed to be. And we will try to get that done as quickly as we can.”
“Obviously this affects our timeline,” he acknowledged, “because we need to rework some pieces of steel and some welds.” Based on the new projected timeline, Mr. Krenek estimated that the bridge would now open sometime in the summer of 2019.
This represents the latest in a series of delays for the bridge. The most recent timetable called for the span to be complete before the end of this year. This represented a slippage from the previous goal of autumn, 2017.
That setback came two years after the BPCA’s then-chairman, Dennis Mehiel recalled at a December, 2015 Authority meeting, “when I arrived here, three and a half years ago, it was clear that Mayor Bloomberg wanted to officiate at a ground breaking before the end of that year, then we pushed it off to before the end of his last year in office.” That would have translated into a 2013 opening for the bridge.
When David Emil, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) — which is funding the project, in partnership with the BPCA — spoke at the bridge’s groundbreaking ceremony, in November, 2016, he said ruefully, “I have been working on this for 28 years.” This was a reference to Mr. Emil’s tenure as president of the BPCA, from 1987 through 1994, during which time plans for a pedestrian span crossing West Street in front of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel were first formulated.
The West Thames pedestrian bridge span is intended to be a permanent replacement for the Rector Place pedestrian bridge, which was erected as a “temporary” crossing one year after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. (The Rector Place bridge was originally slated to be demolished within two years of its opening, but celebrated its 16th anniversary last month.)
The new West Thames bridge will stretch diagonally across the intersection of West and West Thames Streets, from the southwest corner on the Battery Park City side, to the northeast corner on the Financial District side, near the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, where a new residential tower recently finished construction.
Although plans for a pedestrian span at West Thames stretch back to the era when the current governor’s father occupied the State House, the most recent version of the proposal dates from the mid-2000s, when the BPCA proposed to pay for the bridge itself, and have it open by the first day of school at the newly built P.S./I.S. 276 in 2009. But the City (which must approve major capital expenses by the BPCA) refused to allow the Authority to spend the $18 million the bridge was then projected to cost.
Since then, the structure’s anticipated price tag has nearly tripled to $45.1 million. Indeed, it jumped 64 percent (increasing by $17.6 million) in the seven months between November, 2015 (when the LMDC’s board approved a budget of $27.5 million), and that agency’s board meeting the following June, when they signed off a revised budget of $45.1 million.
Under that plan budget, the LMDC increased its contribution to the West Thames pedestrian bridge project by $13 million (for a total of $33 million), while the BPCA bumped up its subsidy from $7.5 million to $8.25 million. The EDC also found $3.8 million in federal highway funds to cover the cost of demolishing the existing Rector Place pedestrian bridge. (This figure is $300,000 more than the bridge cost to build in 2002.)
Assuming the West Thames bridge project adheres to its latest budget, it will (at a total length of 230 feet) cost slightly more than $196,000 per linear foot, or approximately $16,340 per inch. For comparison, the new Tappan Zee Bridge project, in the Hudson Valley, is costing approximately $244,000 per linear foot, but that bridge is eight lanes wide, rather than the 16-foot width of the West Thames pedestrian bridge.
With the West Thames Bridge now slated for completion in late-2019, children who entered the first grade on the day P.S./I.S. 276 opened in 2009 (when the most recent incarnation of the plan was originally slated for completion) will be juniors in high school by the time that the bridge becomes available to the public, assuming the project adheres to its current schedule.