Seismic Design of Two New York Bridges

Abstract eng:
The Third Avenue Bridge and Willis Avenue Bridge are two adjacent bridges each carrying one directional traffic across Harlem River in New York City. The replacement of 100-year old Third Avenue Bridge is complete. The new 5-lane crossing consists of 17 approach spans and a 107-m long swing span for an overall bridge length of 457m. Including on-grade approaches, the overall project length is 1067m. Construction of the $118.8 million bridge replacement project began in 2001 and completed in 2005. The Willis Avenue Swing Bridge over the Harlem River is being replaced under a $612 million project which is massive in scope as it extends over a mile in length, passes over the Harlem River and an adjoining railyard and provides connections between two major highways as well as three major arterial streets. The new alignment not only dramatically improves the alignment from that of the 100 year old existing bridge but also facilitates maintaining 70,000 vehicles per day of roadway traffic as well as maintaining navigation on the river. The project centerpiece is a new four lane, 106 meter long swing span. This paper focuses on the seismic analysis and seismic design of the two bridges. Challenges faced by the designers of the new bridge, and solutions developed to meet these challenges will be introduced. Since similarities exist between these two bridges, more detailed description will be on one of them, i.e. Third Avenue Bridge, and the other one is only in brief.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket