NYC’s Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge will undergo a cabling rehab job to keep it in good condition for years to come.
During its monthly meeting on Wednesday, the MTA board approved a $249 million contract to protect the Verrazzano and keep it in a state of good repair for the 220,000 vehicles that cross it each day.
The centerpiece of the work is a new dehumidification system for the four main suspension cables of the double-decker span, which connects Staten Island to Brooklyn and is the country’s longest suspension bridge.
Wires inside the cables can suffer from corrosion, which is accelerated by humidity, MTA officials explained. Dehumidification will not only help prevent corrosion but also preserve the current strength of the 60-year-old bridge’s cables.
“Essentially all of those cables, the wires bound up inside those cables, suffer from corrosion over time, and it’s humidity that really accelerates the corrosion,” Jamie Torres-Springer, president of the MTA’s construction and development, said. “So, the goal is to get us back to under 40% humidity within that tightly bound cable, and keep it there.”
He added that the system extends the useful life of the cables.
“It’s a new system for us, but it’s become a widely accepted method of preventing steel cable corrosion around the world,” he said.
The MTA is already installing the system on the suspension portion of the RFK Bridge. The goal is to have all four MTA bridges outfitted with the system
“With the 2025-2029 plan, we will be able to install the system on our two other suspension bridges as well,” Torres-Torres Springer said.
In total, the MTA operates seven bridges in NYC. Combined with its two tunnels in the Big Apple, the connections handle more than 336 million vehicle crossings each year.
A ‘cost-effective’ solution
An article in the trade publication Roads & Bridges describes main-cable dehumidification as a “cost-effective” solution for preserving cables and the structures they support.
The MTA contracted with Skanska Koch, Inc., a construction company, to conduct the work, which will include installing an acoustic monitoring system on the bridge’s four main cables.
The system will track conditions within the cables, associated electrical and communication systems, internal inspection of selected cable panels, replacement of hand ropes and stanchions, and maintenance of the cable dehumidification and acoustic monitoring systems for five years after commissioning.
According to an article in the Staten Island Advance, the cable dehumidification project was discussed last year but put on hold when Gov. Kathy Hochul paused the start of congestion pricing in NYC on June 5, 2024.
Now that the project is revived, work is expected to take about four years to complete.
It is unclear right now when the work will start.
