Rusted bridge prompts concerns

Overhaul too pricey, say Boston, state officials

When more than 600 Boston youths begin heading to Long Island today for summer camp, the buses they board will be smaller than usual: The only road to Camp Harbor View crosses the Long Island Bridge, a rusted span that had weight restrictions imposed last summer.

Ladder trucks and other fire vehicles are banned from using the bridge and MBTA buses can only cross it at half-capacity. Though school buses are only half the weight of many MBTA buses and are permitted over the span, the campers will ride in smaller-scale buses as a precaution.

The Long Island Bridge is safe, thanks to recent repairs and the weight restrictions, Boston officials say. But they have no designs - or money - to give the bridge the $60 million overhaul it needs. The state had included the bridge project in plans for a bond issue in 2002 but cut the funding the following year.

Still, Mayor Thomas M. Menino has continued to encourage such programs as the camp for city youths on Long Island, increasing usage of the bridge and infuriating people in Quincy, which provides the only access to the Boston-owned bridge but gets few benefits from it.

"I hope it falls but no one gets hurt - and that solves the problem," said state Senator Michael Morrissey, a Quincy Democrat who has called for dismantling the bridge rather than using state funds to replace it.

The bridge, built in 1951, has been rehabilitated four times since 1990 but the punishing exposure to the salty sea has corroded steel components, wearing holes through the steel in many places.

Engineering consultants hired by the city noted in a recent report that the bridge might be even worse than it looks because loose rust often conceals actual holes.

The bridge needs to be thoroughly cleaned and painted to halt the corrosion process and washed regularly to prevent it from recurring, they found.

The Long Island Bridge is nearly two-thirds of a mile long and is built in the same deck truss style that prompted concerns after the collapse of a Minneapolis bridge last summer. That failure was traced to bad design of gusset plates, which hold together various components of the bridge, rather than wear and tear.

The gusset plates on the Long Island Bridge have been a particular concern for inspectors as well. When the bridge's loads were restricted last year, consultants found that 10 percent of the gusset plates had holes, ranging from one-sixteenth of an inch to four inches in diameter.

Last spring, chunks of concrete fell off the bridge, which was inspected by consultants for the city and found to be in serious condition. This rating typically means the bridge is structurally deficient by federal standards - indicating the bridge is in need of repairs or replacement parts and nearing the end of its useful life.

Since then, the bridge has undergone a series of repairs aimed at replacing worn components to ensure its integrity and maintain it until a full rehabilitation can be done.

"Absolutely it's safe the way we have it now," said Rob Rottenbucher, a former bridge inspector who was newly hired as the city's chief structural engineer to bring some expertise in-house. "I am very confident and if I was not very confident I would not let the bridge open."

But the steep cost of a complete renovation has some politicians asking: Is this bridge worth saving? Morrissey argues against it, saying that, even if the state had $50 million to $60 million to offer the city to renovate the bridge, he would oppose the funding.

"I just think it would be a giant mistake to prioritize a project like this over much-needed repairs in the city of Boston - and for that matter at the expense of other communities in the Commonwealth," Morrissey said. "Fifty million dollars would go a long, long way."

The island is not accessible to the public and is used mostly by the city of Boston. A gatehouse on Moon Island - which precedes the bridge to Long Island - is staffed by police.

About 1,500 people will be on the island on summer days when camp is open, and many of them - such as the campers - come and go over the bridge each day by van or small bus.

The island is also home to about 15 social service programs - including emergency healthcare for patients with AIDS, substance abuse treatment, a homeless shelter, and even an organic farm run by the homeless people for their consumption and for use by a few city restaurants.

State officials, who face a backlog of billions of dollars worth of bridge repairs, say the Long Island Bridge is not on their list of priorities because it is not widely used.

"Because we have very limited funding opportunities for bridges throughout the Commonwealth, and because the Long Island Bridge is not widely used by the public, we have no plans to fund repairs to that bridge at this time," said Adam Hurtubise, a spokesman for the state Executive Office of Transportation.

The city's capital budget calls for spending $13.5 million in the next four years on maintenance of the bridge. "We can keep doing this for years. There is no imminent cutoff date," said Dennis Royer, the city's chief of public works and transportation.

Jack Connors, the former Hill Holliday adman and civic leader who created Camp Harbor View and raised $17.5 million for it, built a pier that could be used for boats to ferry the campers out.

"If five or ten years from now we have a problem, we now have a 150-yard pier," he said. "We think we'll be OK."