(The following article by Alison Leigh Cowan was posted on the New York Times website on September 28.)
NIANTIC, Conn. — Passengers riding the rails in the Northeast hardly notice the three busy drawbridges they cross in southeastern Connecticut. But Amtrak engineers say the bridges are in such dire condition that they threaten to sever service between New York and Boston and curtail access to three rivers.
The tiny 291-foot drawbridge that has operated over the Niantic River here for 97 years is the busiest of the three. Its steel supports have holes so large, a person can stick a finger in them. To the east, bolts supporting a four-million-pound counterweight keep failing on the 85-year-old bridge that runs over the Thames River. To the west, structural support pins are wearing out on the bridge that ferries trains over the Connecticut River, much as it has for 97 years.
Of the roughly 1,300 bridges that Amtrak owns, the three in southeastern Connecticut are among the most antiquated and least reliable in the system, Amtrak officials said on Tuesday.
“These bridges are worn out and have reached the end of their useful lives,” said Jim Richter, Amtrak’s deputy chief engineer for structures. “The time has come to replace them.”
He and his colleagues want Congress to approve a $1.5 billion appropriation for the fiscal year that begins on Friday, up from last year’s $1.2 billion, so that they can mend or replace the bridges and do other repairs. But they are having so little success persuading Congress to budge much beyond $1.2 billion, that they passed out hard hats and invited reporters and an aide to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, to tour the bridges on Tuesday so they could see their many flaws.
David J. Hughes, Amtrak’s chief engineer, spoke passionately about the need to shore up the bridges along the Connecticut stretch of the Northeast Corridor that carries 40 trains a day.
“Structures talk to you if you know what to listen to,” he said. “They yell and scream at you. Now the Thames is talking to us. Bolts broke in 1994 and then again in 1995 and we can’t drill holes anymore, and the bolts keep breaking. What the bridge is starting to tell you is there’s too much accumulated fatigue and stress, and if you don’t listen, shame on you.”
Amtrak is heavily dependent on federal money and does not have the resources to address the infrastructure problems it inherited from the bankrupt Penn Central Railroad, which once owned the lines in this part of Connecticut.
Amtrak thought it could solve some of its operational and financial problems by electrifying the lines east of New Haven so it could run faster service with its new Acela trains. It did, but the electrification project also added weight and stress to the already overburdened bridges.
Six bridges in Connecticut are overdue for overhauls, according to Amtrak engineers. The three drawbridges pose the most immediate problems because of the wear and tear they each endure from having to open nearly 4,000 times a year to accommodate everything from commercial fishing boats to pleasure boats to submarines coming and going to their base in Groton, Conn.
If Washington does not provide the money, Amtrak officials said, on-time performance will continue to suffer. They recalled the winter of 2001, when the drawbridge over the Connecticut River bridge got stuck in the open position for nine hours, stopping all train traffic. When mechanics finally lowered the bridge back into place, rail traffic resumed. But the bridge then remained in the down position for days, preventing boats, including some laden with heating oil, from reaching their destinations.
As part of its $1.5 billion request before Congress, Amtrak proposes to use $350 million to repair infrastructure like tracks, stations and bridges. In recent years, it has received an average of $71 million a year toward such projects, according to Mr. Hughes. That money has to cover any repairs needed in a system that encompasses 1,100 miles of track, 1,300 bridges, 1,000 miles of power lines , 18 miles of tunnels, and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.
Fixing the Thames bridge alone is expected to cost $45 million, though the cost would be spread over a few years. On the table is a plan to leave much of the bridge in place and eventually replace the current drawbridge mechanism with a pair of towers that would lift the tracks like an elevator when boats needed to cross.
The Niantic bridge needs to be replaced entirely, say Amtrak officials, who blame it for 2,000 minutes of delays last year. “It’s a tired, old bridge,” said Mr. Richter. The engineers want to see a replacement bridge built alongside the current structure so service would not be disrupted during the construction phase. That plan has a price tag of $60 million.
The 1,535-foot bridge over the Connecticut River is the longest of the three. “Replacing this will be quite expensive, more than the others,” Mr. Richter said. For now, Amtrak is hoping to get $500,000 it can use to come up with recommendations.