Major NYC Bridge to Undergo 15-Year Repair Job

RFK (Triborough Bridge) at night. (Photo by smith_c19 / Flickr)

(New York, NY - WNYC) The RFK Bridge, formerly known as the Triborough, is shaped like a "Y" with a very long tail because it connects three boroughs of New York City: Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. It opened to traffic during the Great Depression--75 years ago this month--and was the first bridge in the city designed exclusively for the automobile.

Now the old girl is feeling her age. Or for gender balance, the old boy has the engineering equivalent of rickets.

On Friday, a 15-year repair job will commence on numerous parts of the bridge: decks, ramps, roadbeds and more. Initial work on the $1 billion project will remove concrete around the Manhattan toll plaza and replace it with rubberized asphalt designed to slow water erosion and give drivers a smoother ride.

After Labor Day, the Harlem River Drive's southbound ramp onto the bridge at 125th Street will be taken down and replaced. The NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the bridge, will erect a detour ramp until the new ramp opens at the end of the year.

The RFK Bridge carries an average of 170,000 vehicles per day. It is actually a complex of three long-span bridges, several smaller bridges, a viaduct, parks, administrative offices and 14 miles of approach roads.

Needless to say, drivers should expect lane closures, changes to traffic patterns and late night work crews laboring under lights bright enough to land an alien spaceship. (Should that occur, let Transportation Nation be the first to welcome our merciful overlords.)