The nearly 100-year-old Portal Bridge is frequently opened, delaying Amtrak and NJ Transit trains.
In the waning days of 2008, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) approved plans to replace one of the most problematic rail bridges on the Northeast Corridor. Built in 1910, the Portal Bridge spans the Hackensack River between Kearny and Secaucus, and is crossed by approximately 150,000 NJ Transit and Amtrak riders each day.
The two-track bridge is functionally obsolete and expensive to maintain. Sitting on a turntable with its lowest beams just 23 feet above the surface of the river, it is opened almost daily to allow commercial boat traffic through, causing considerable train delays.
Approval of the final environmental impact statement enables Amtrak to build two new structures on either side of the existing span. Amtrak and NJ Transit will split the $1.3 billion tab for the project, which is expected to be completed by 2014.
The Portal Bridge also acts as a capacity bottleneck for NJ Transit's NYC-bound lines.
The two projects are essential for capacity expansion and will vastly improve regional mobility for hundreds of thousands of transit users. The new bridge tracks will funnel trains into the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) Tunnel, enabling NJ Transit to add more trains on the Morris and Essex, North Jersey Coast and Raritan Valley lines, and provide one-seat rides into Manhattan for passengers on the Main, Bergen, Pascack Valley and Port Jervis Lines.
For north Jersey, full realization of ARC tunnel benefits is predicated on the capacity added by the Portal Bridge project, making the FRA approval timely and significant. According to NJDOT Commissioner Stephen Dilts, if the Federal Transit Administration signs off on ARC by granting a “Record of Decision” before federal stimulus money is allocated, the tunnel will be poised to begin construction in 6 months.
Images: Top – Michael Rosenthal/NJ Transit. Lower right – from Portal Bridge FEIS.
The Portal Bridge project as designed should never have been approved. A 4 track fixed bridge and NO movable bridge would have made sense. This seems to be symptomatic of the ARC. The tunnel to an expensive and cramped station that has NO connection to either the East River tunnels or Grand Central Terminal is another part.
If the movable bridge is needed for the Kearney Yard, move the Kearney Yard. If it is needed for connecting the Bergen County lines to the Northeast Corridor via the proposed circuitous connection, revise the connection to be more direct and have fewer grades (this assumes any connection of the Bergen County lines to Penn Station via Secaucus makes sense).
[...] a project that will ease capacity constraints on the Northeast Corridor and allow the state to recognize the full benefit of the Access to the Region’s Core rail [...]
[...] Transit is building 2 new rail bridges across the Hackensack River (a “north” span and a “south” span adjacent to the current [...]
[...] Transit is building 2 new rail bridges across the Hackensack River (a “north” span and a “south” span adjacent to the current [...]
[...] This morning, NJ’s Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez joined Amtrak President Joseph Boardman to make the exciting announcement that Amtrak will try to take the lead on a new trans-Hudson rail project, the “Gateway Project.” The agency has proposed a $50 million engineering study that will take advantage of the work done for the ARC Tunnel. It says the project can be completed as early as 2020, at an estimated cost of $13.5 billion (which includes the cost of replacing the Portal Bridge). [...]