NJ TRANSIT and Amtrak have announced the Portal North Bridge has reached 50 percent completion. At a ceremony at the construction site, the agencies marked the halfway point of the project. The new bridge will replace the current 114-year-old swing bridge, which opens for maritime traffic resulting in a bottleneck along the busiest stretch of passenger rail in the country. The new bridge is a fixed span that eliminates the need to open and close.
The Portal North Bridge is a new modern two-track, high-level, fixed-span bridge that will improve service and capacity along this section of the Northeast Corridor. The new Portal North Bridge will rise 50 feet over the Hackensack River, nearly doubling the height clearance and will allow marine traffic to pass underneath without interrupting rail traffic.
The Portal North Bridge project will eliminate the 114-year-old swing bridge, which has been the enduring source of major service disruptions for NJ TRANSIT and Amtrak customers traveling on the Northeast Corridor.
The project is being funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation, New Jersey, New York, and Amtrak. In January 2021, Governor Murphy announced the signing of a Full Funding Grant Agreement which secured $766.5 million in Federal Transit Administration funding to support the project’s construction.
In October 2021, Governor Murphy and NJ TRANSIT announced the approval of a $1,559,993,000 construction contract awarded to Skanska/Traylor Bros PNB Joint Venture (STJV) for the construction of the new Portal North Bridge. The contract represents the single largest construction award in NJ TRANSIT’s history.
The Portal North Bridge project spans 2.44 miles of the Northeast Corridor line and includes construction of retaining walls, deep foundations, concrete piers, structural steel bridge spans, rail systems, demolition of the existing bridge, and related incidental works. The Portal North Bridge project is a critical component of the larger Gateway Program, which will eventually double rail capacity between Newark and New York.
-via Press Release
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