ALBANY, N.Y.—The acting commissioner of New York's transportation department said Friday that he expects to find out in a couple of weeks whether the eroded concrete piers on the closed Champlain Bridge can be repaired.
Stanley Gee told The Associated Press that underwater inspections of the piers on the 2,184-foot bridge linking Crown Point, N.Y., and Addison, Vt., should be completed in a day or two.
Department of Transportation engineers will then analyze the information and determine if the 80-year-old span can be repaired or has to be replaced, Gee said.
DOT officials closed the bridge Oct. 16, the day Gee says the agency received the pier inspection analysis that reported severe erosion to a concrete pier caused by freezing and thawing water over the years.
New York and Vermont own the bridge, but New York's DOT is in charge of maintenance.
The span is a deck truss bridge similar in design to the one that collapsed in Minneapolis in 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145. After that incident, all 49 deck truss spans in New York state were inspected, including the Champlain Bridge. None was found to have serious structural problems.
The 2007 inspection of the Champlain Bridge focused on its upper section, not the underwater sections of 10-foot-thick concrete piers, Gee said. A biennial inspection conducted this past spring found problems with the steel structure, and repair work was begun in the summer as New York's DOT and the Vermont Agency for Transportation studied whether to rehabilitate or replace the bridge.
While the repair work was under way in September, the lake's water level dropped and crews spotted erosion on previously submerged sections of piers, Gee said. An underwater inspection discovered an 18-inch erosion on one of the piers, compared to 5 inches in 2005, the last time such an inspection was required under DOT bridge regulations.
Alarmed by the increased rate of damage, DOT officials decided to shut down the bridge, Gee said. Rates of erosion before 2005 were more gradual, he said.
"We're trying to figure out why this particular bridge and its foundations are deteriorating more quickly than others," said Gee, whom Gov. David Paterson nominated in May as DOT commissioner.
If the bridge can't be reopened, DOT officials favor putting a temporary replacement nearby, Gee said. Building a replacement across a narrow part of the lake 3 miles south of Ticonderoga is no longer an option because of road infrastructure concerns on both shores, he said.
While the bridge remains closed, free ferry and bus rides are being offered to get people and vehicles across the southern end of the lake. Otherwise, motorists face an 80-mile detour over New York and Vermont roads.
Despite the apparent suddenness of the bridge closure, Gee said the DOT's current guidelines for bridge safety worked at Crown Point.
"I think our systems work in that we inspect the bridge and we do the analysis and try to repair it," he said. "When more information comes to us we act according to our protocol. It's not the first time we closed bridges."
As for the 48 other deck truss bridges in New York, Gee said: "My message is that they're safe."
