Bridge work to start in ’19, cost $34M
Original estimate was $11 million
A major rehabilitation of the suspension bridge that carries Wurts Street over the Rondout Creek between Kingston and Port Ewen will begin in late 2019, and the expected cost has more than tripled from the original estimate.
Ulster County Planning Director Dennis Doyle said the project, originally expected to cost $11 million, now has an estimated price tag of $34 million.
The project will be overseen by the state Department of Transportation and be paid for with state and federal money.
Doyle said amendments to the plan need to be approved by the Ulster County Transportation Council’s Policy Committee, which meets Feb. 28 at the Rondout Municipal Center, 1915 Lucas Ave., Rosendale.
The amendments account for the extra $23 million of the project’s expected cost and will
move up the expected start date of the work from 2021 to 2019, Doyle said.
The bridge underwent improvements in 2014. That project, which cost about $2.8 million, included replacing
the deck, repairing structural steel, and painting.
The bridge also is closed now — probably through early March — due to maintenance on the underside of the span, as well as painting.
The project due to start in late 2019 will be a “complete rehabilitation” that
will “modernize the crossing, enhance structural stability and preserve [the bridge’s] important place in our local history,” New York Assemblyman Kevin Cahill said when he announced the state funding in 2016.
Cahill, D-Kingston, said the project will include replacing and/or repairing structural steel; blast cleaning
and painting; augmenting cable eyebar anchorages; making truss and tower repairs; and installing a new concrete deck, sidewalks, railing and lighting.
The Ulster County Planning Department is accepting written comments about the project at bsla@ co.ulster.ny.us through 5
p.m. Thursday.
Construction of the bridge began in 1916, was halted by World War I and started again in 1920. When completed in 1921, the bridge was the final link of New York’s first north-south highway on the west side of the Hudson River, U.S. Route 9W.
The span commonly is
called the Wurts Street bridge but its formal name is the Rondout Creek Bridge.
A new span to carry Route 9W over the creek, the Judge John T. Loughran Bridge, opened in 1979, just east of the older bridge, and now is the primary link between Kingston and Port Ewen.