The BroadsheetDAILY May 24

“We have begun installing temporary traffic and street lights,” he added, “because the wires for the permanent lights are in the way of bridge. These will be put back once the bridge is installed.”

“We’ll begin posting ‘no standing’ signs on Monday evening, Memorial Day,” he noted, explaining that the five-day process will entail street closures on Wednesday (during the late morning and early afternoon), as well as from 6:00 pm Friday through early Sunday morning. “Parking and standing will be temporarily eliminated on South End Avenue, from Rector Place to the cul-de-sac, and on West Thames Street, between West Street and the Esplanade,” for multiple days. During this period, the M20 and M9 bus routes, along with the Downtown Connection shuttle, will be detoured away from their stops on West Thames Street.

The span under construction

On Tuesday morning (May 28), “we’ll begin setting up,” Mr. Krenek noted. Starting that morning, the painted medians at the center of West Thames Street and South End Avenue will become staging and holding areas for the large vehicles needed to transport the bridge spans from the Esplanade to West Street. “During this time, the parking lanes will be used for emergency vehicles and building access,” he said.

On Wednesday (May 29), he continued, “we will, weather permitting, bring three large barges up the Hudson and tie them up where West Thames Street meets the Esplanade.” One of these barges will contain a 500-ton crane, while the remaining two will each hold one section of the bridge. (The span is divided into a pair of trusses, each of which will cross one half of West Street, and meet above the traffic island in its center.)

“On Wednesday,” Mr. Krenek said, “the crane will lift these over the Esplanade, to West Thames Street, and lower them onto large trucks, which will be driven to South End Avenue, where they will make a k-turn, and then back into our cordoned-off work area, between Battery Place and West Street.” During this process, trees on West Thames Street and South End Avenue will be protected by tying back branches that the spans (each of which is 16 feet wide, and will be lifted 25 feet into the air) might brush against.

The two sections of the bridge will remain parked on West Thames Street for all of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, awaiting the weekend, when reduced traffic volume will make it possible to lift them into place.

“On Friday, we have a land-based crane coming in,” Mr. Krenek explained, “which requires ten tractor-trailers worth of equipment to set up.” This crane will be used to lift the two bridge spans from the trucks on West Thames Street and into position, over West Street. “We’ll begin assembling this crane just after 6:00 pm,” he noted. From that time, through early Sunday morning, West Thames Street (between Battery Place and West Street) will be closed to vehicular traffic, although pedestrians will have intermittent access.

“On Friday night, he said, “West Street will become one lane in each direction, until after midnight. Starting at 2:00 am on Saturday morning, the Department of Transportation has given us permission to use ‘traffic holds,’ which close the street entirely, for periods of 15 minutes.” During these stoppages, southbound traffic on West Street will be diverted to Broadway via Chambers Street, while northbound traffic (coming from the FDR Drive or the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel), will be detoured to Trinity Place.

“We’re allowed to close West Street temporarily,” he said, but then we have to flush out the traffic that has backed up, before we begin another 15-minute hold.” Friday night and Saturday morning have been set aside for lowering into place the half of the span that will traverse the northbound side of West Street.

On Saturday night, the schedule calls for placing the second half of the span, which will cross the southbound side of West Street. “For Saturday,” Mr. Krenek predicted, “the logistics will be very similar, except that we shouldn’t need to close the northbound side of West Street, since that section of the bridge will already be in place.”

“We should be done installing that second span of the bridge by sunrise on Sunday morning” Mr. Krenek anticipated, after which several smaller structural elements will also be hoisted into place. Once this work is done, “that same fleet of ten tractor trailers will come back, and the crew will begin taking down the crane and hauling it away.”

“By dusk on Sunday evening,” he said, “everything should be back to normal, except that there will be a new, 150,000-pound bridge crossing West Street.” At that point, street closures will end and parking regulations should be restored to their normal pattern shortly afterward.

“Please keep in mind that all of this is weather-dependent,” Mr. Krenek cautioned. “A storm on Wednesday would mean we delay bringing the barges in until Thursday. And bad weather on Saturday or Sunday would require us to wait until the following weekend to install the bridge over West Street.”

Although installation of the two trusses will mark a major step forward in the years-long process of designing and building the West Thames pedestrian bridge, several months of work remain before the span can open to the public. Mr. Krenek said that current plans anticipate a ribbon cutting around Labor Day weekend.

The Waterfront Alliance is suggesting more ferries, docks, a marina, a boat maintenance facility, historic ship berths, even public access to a small beach.

Visions for the future of Governors Island are beginning to come into focus, as various constituencies emphasize their priorities.

Earlier this month, the Waterfront Alliance unveiled its Maritime Activation Plan for the highly regarded island, which focuses on strategies for capitalizing on the unique waterfront assets located along the island’s 2.2-mile perimeter, while offering practical recommendations for meeting the challenges of being situated in the middle of New York Harbor.

Among the plan’s key recommendations is to expand ferry service to meet increasing demand, while launching routes from diverse neighborhoods located farther away than the current embarkation points in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. While new ferry routes require a significant investment, the Alliance also proposes some inexpensive fixes, such as adjusting the schedule of current ferries by as little as five minutes, to give Staten Island residents time to get from the nearby Whitehall ferry terminal to the Battery Maritime Building (where the Governors Island boat is located), without having to wait an additional hour.

The Alliance also proposes that Governors Island welcome recreational boaters with facilities such as a new marina, and expanding kayaking programs — already offered on Governors Island by the Downtown Boathouse.

Among the proposal floated by the Alliance is to create a water “touch point” at the natural beach that temporarily forms with every low tide along the Buttermilk Channel side of Governors Island.

The same report also touts the benefits of a resource that is chronically scarce in New York Harbor: water “touch points,” which allow visitors to come into physical contact with the local estuary. In this context, the Alliance notes that “a natural beach opens at low tide on Buttermilk Channel,” the side of Governors Island that faces Brooklyn. “This could be provided with minimal step-down infrastructure and an educator/attendant on station whenever the gate is open, for additional safety,” the report observes.

Less conspicuous, but still significant, would be, “new infrastructure for freight access,” the Alliance observes, noting that, “nearly all freight and trash is moved from the Island by trucks on the Lower Manhattan crossing, which share ferries with the public.” Establishing a dedicated ferry dock for freight would alleviate crowding on ferries and increase visitor capacity.

In a separate, but related development, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Clare Newman, who has most recently served as an executive at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, would take over as chief of the Trust for Governors Island in June, when outgoing president Michael Samuelian steps down.

In a story first reported by Crain’s, Ms. Newman will report to Alicia Glen, who recently departed from City Hall, where she served as deputy mayor. Ms. Glen, who has been appointed chair of the Trust, will take over from Carl Weisbrod.

Both Ms. Newman’s and Ms. Glen’s priorities are widely believed to focus on economic development on Governors Island (within two tracts set aside for this purpose, which total more than 33 acres), as a means of making the park financially sustainable.

	Igor Sikorsky

1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.
1958 – United Press International is formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.
1961 – American civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for “disturbing the peace” after disembarking from their bus.
1976 – The London to Washington, D.C., Concorde service begins.
1994 – Four men convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1993 are each sentenced to 240 years in prison.
Births
1819 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (d. 1901)
1868 – Charlie Taylor, American engineer and mechanic (d. 1956) The Wright Brothers’ mechanic
1911 – Barbara West, English survivor of the Sinking of the RMS Titanic (d. 2007)
1941 – Bob Dylan, American singer-songwriter
Deaths
1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish mathematician and astronomer (b. 1473)
1959 – John Foster Dulles, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 52nd United States Secretary of State (b. 1888)
1981 – Herbert Müller, Swiss race car driver (b. 1940)
1995 – Harold Wilson,Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1916)
1996 – Joseph Mitchell, American journalist and author (b. 1908)