Liberty Bridge reopens with a weight limit
employed last week. By shift85i8ng the damaged chord the distorted lower support of the bridge is called — by 1⅝ inches longitudinally and 1¼ inches laterally, engineers were able to give their blessing to the reopening of a bridge that carries 55,000 vehicles a day.
But although many took to the roads Monday afternoon to display confidence in the repaired span by simply driving across it, others took to social media to ques- tion the safety of the Liberty Bridge or convey their unease at traveling on it.
“Still nope,” one person tweeted. “I wouldn’t step on that bridge let alone drive on it with other vehicles,” tweeted another. “You’d have to pay me to ride on the #LibertyBridge #ItsGonnaFall,” a third tweeted.
Nonsense, said Dan Cessna, local district executive for the state Department of Transportation.
“The reality is, if the bridge wasn’t safe, we wouldn’t reopen it,” Mr. Cessna said, during a Monday afternoon news conference on the South Side. Serving as a backdrop to Mr. Cessna’s announcement: the bridge that would be empty fo2r,1o2n9ly ano7th,1e5r7 45 m59in7utes or so before hosting the sw2e,1e9t7sound7s,0o9f7traff6ic01once again.
Not everyone will benefit right away from the long, hard hours put in to repair the bridge by PennDOT, its consultants and the Joseph B. Fay Co., the contractor for an ongoing $80 million renovation project that was the unhappy catalyst for the closure.
For now, there will be a nine-ton weight limit on vehicles crossing the span. Cars, pickup trucks and ambulances are good to go. But firetrucks, school buses, Port Authority buses, tractor-trailers and empty triaxle trucks will be forbidden. Mr. Cessna said the Pennsylvania State Police will conduct spot checks on vehicle weights.
If all goes according to plan, that weight limit will jump to 30 tons over the next few weeks, Mr. Cessna said. The side of the bridge opposite from where the fire occurred must be bolstered first, a task that can be accomplished without disrupting traffic. With the jacking of the bridge to rotate and realign the damaged chord, about 80 percent of the load was shifted back to the support. But the remaining 20 percent of the load has to be picked up by the chord opposite it.
“Basically we have to strengthen the other chord to carry that additional load that didn’t shift back. That’s going to require additional steel plates and angles. That’s currently being designed and will be installed very shortly,” Mr. Cessna said.
A permanent repair is still in the works, and once that is done, PennDOT anticipates the bridge will once again be able to accommodate a 40-ton weight limit.
During his news conference, Mr. Cessna could not resist teasing the media. He said that PennDOT knew Sunday that the bridge would reopen the next day, pending some final steel strengthening and the introduction of updated signage with the nine-ton weight limit.
“All the placards have been changed this afternoon,” Mr. Cessna said. “We expected one of you would pick up on that. Nobody contacted us.”