(The following article by Larry Higgs was posted on the Asbury Park Press website on April 13.)
NEWARK, N.J. — NJ Transit’s board of directors approved a $4.7 million contract to rebuild an elderly drawbridge on the North Jersey Coast Line and approved designing new connections to Penn Station platforms to make it easier for riders to get to street level, once they get off the train in New York.
The board approved a $4.7 million contract with Kiska Construction Inc. of Long Island City, N.Y., to restore the Morgan Drawbridge over Cheesequake Creek in Sayreville. Kiska should start working on the span in late spring and complete the job in summer 2007, said Dan Stessel, NJ Transit spokesman.
“It’s 94 years old, and after 94 years, any bridge, especially a movable one, will be in need of attention,” Stessel said.
Most of the work will be done during off-peak hours and on weekends if possible, he said.
The bridge was built in 1919, carries 74 passenger trains daily and is part of NJ Transit’s larger effort to rebuild aging infrastructure, said Kris Kolluri, NJ Transit board chairman and state transportation commissioner.
The board also approved a contract amendment with Transit Link Consultants, a joint venture of Parsons Brinckerhoff of Newark and Systra Consulting Inc. of Bloomfield, to design a new concourse at Penn Station, New York, which will connect to the Moynihan Station to be built in the Farley post office, across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station.
The project would extend the platforms serving tracks one through four to accommodate longer trains and connect them with the new concourse, which will allow NJ Transit to add three to four more trains an hour when the project is completed in 2010, Stessel said.
The new concourse would be linked to the existing Long Island Railroad Concourse in the station’s west end.
Tracks one to four are dead-end tracks, meaning it now takes more time to unload trains and back them out of the way, he said.
“Those are concrete, real-world solutions to current and future needs. We approve,” said Doug Bowen of the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers. “It has more ways for people to move in more directions. There are more exits, more two-way flow.”
Preliminary engineering is scheduled to be finished in the fall, and final designs could be completed by fall 2007, when construction could start, Stessel said.
The concourse and platform extension also will become part of the larger project to build a second Hudson River Tunnel, build additional station platforms under 34th Street in Manhattan and make other improvements to provide more New York service. Projected completion of the proposed tunnel and related improvements is 2015.