A bridge too dangerous?
It’s small comfort that New York state secured an extended warranty on portions of the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge that may have an extraordinarily high number of defective structural bolts. And no comfort, we’d dare say, for people who actually drive on said bridge.
It’s even more disconcerting that even though the state has known of this for years, it has not conducted tests to find out just how severe the problem is.
The state needs a thorough — and independent — look at this bridge, and fast.
The bolts in question are used to connect the roughly 1,250 massive girders under the concrete deck of the 3.1 mile span. The girders — weighing more than 100 tons each and measuring up to 120 feet long and 12 feet high —are connected by steel plates, with each splice secured by about 500 bolts.
In a deep look into the problems with the bridge, the Times Union’s Brendan J. Lyons found there were signs of trouble more than two years before it opened in September 2018. At the Port of Coeymans where the initial assembly was done, bolts would break while being tightened, or would snap in transit down the Hudson River to the site of the bridge, which connects Rockland and Westchester counties via Interstate 287.
Documents and interviews reveal that workers were told to collect broken bolts before inspectors noticed them. A safety manager, James S. Mcnall, says he was told by an engineer that he, a foreman, and another engineer took a tugboat ride across the river under cover of darkness to secretly replace broken bolts in girders waiting to be shipped downriver.
Mr. Mcnall reported his concerns about fraud to the state inspector general’s office. He also filed a suit under the False Claims Act, which would entitle him, as a whistleblower, to a share of any judgment or settlement. But for all the concern that the $3.1 billion bridge has critical defects, the state is said to have settled the matter with the contractor, Tappan Zee Constructors, for $2 million and a one-year extension of the warranty, though only on a limited number of sections of the bridge.
Yet it is still unknown just how bad the problem is. A 2017 report by a California metallurgy company, L. Raymond & Associates, for the Thruway Authority said anywhere from 1 percent to 50 percent of the bolts could be at risk. It recommended more testing — which was never done. The study remains confidential, and Mr. Mcnall’s case remains under court seal.
The public deserves far more transparency than that, and far more assurance that the bridge is safe. Clearly, given the potential liability here — financial and political — the state is too conflicted to be considered objective. It should ask a credible third party — such as the U.S. Department of Transportation — to thoroughly review the matter, including testing the bolts. And it should make the findings public.
Until that happens, the state’s assurances that the bridge is safe sound hollow. Meanwhile, perhaps those signs leading up to the bridge should flash caveat agitator — driver beware.