Tobin Bridge Repairs

[statler]

Originally Posted by The Globe

Work never stops on Tobin bridge
Costs rising as crews try to maintain old structure

By David Abel, Globe Staff | October 23, 2007

The wind sometimes howls 80 miles per hour. Drivers often cruise past even faster, some in tractor-trailers, which begin bomblike tremors when they hit potholes. Then there's the steam from the gypsum plant below that can make the clearest day appear thick with fog.

But what really keeps Bob Keeler and the 19 men he supervises from dozing on the job as they replace rivets and scrape rust high above the Mystic River is the jetsam flying at high speeds from the passing traffic: beer bottles, mattresses, everything from slop sinks to sofas.

"You risk your neck working in live traffic," said Keeler, the maintenance manager of the Tobin Memorial Bridge. "You take your life in your hands every time you go out there."

As nature and 80,000 vehicles a day take their toll, Keller's staff does what it can in the ever more costly effort to maintain New England's largest bridge.

The stress became visible this month, when inspectors found fissures in a floor beam that required highway officials to ban trucks, buses, and other commercial vehicles from the southbound lanes.

The cracks in the 57-year-old cantilever truss bridge, which spans more than 2 miles from Charlestown to Chelsea, have been repaired, and yesterday the third lane on the upper level opened to traffic for the first time since Oct. 12. But the work never stops. The countless fixes and patches on the aging bridge will cost taxpayers $13 million this fiscal year, or about $4 million more than a typical year, because of painting and deck-replacement projects.

Officials at the Massachusetts Port Authority, which oversees the Tobin, estimate maintenance costs will rise as much as 10 percent a year as time assaults the 15 concrete piers and 92 steel columns that support the green bridge named for Maurice J. Tobin, a former Boston mayor and governor of Massachusetts.

A consulting firm is about one-third through a three-month, foot-by-foot review of the bridge, which outside inspectors conduct every four years and which will require closing of one of the southbound lanes periodically over coming weeks. They discovered the compromised beam and have since found additional deficiencies, characterized by officials as minor and normal for an older bridge.

"We haven't found anything else that's of a major consequence," said Sam Sleiman, director of capital programs and environmental affairs at Massport. "What we have found is normal wear and tear."

Rusted steel, potholes, electrical problems, and bolts shaken out of place by the vibrating traffic - each beam has three times the number of bolts required, Sleiman says - are commonplace problems for the Tobin. The bridge's maintenance crews spend the year doing everything from replacing the aviation lights atop the bridge to mowing grass at the base of some beams, at least one of which rises from a neighbor's backyard.

Unlike spans in fair-weather locales, such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, major work on the Tobin must stop during the winter, which makes the bridge far more difficult to maintain. The sand and salt spread across the three lanes of traffic on each level, as well as the pounding the roads take from the plows, corrode the bridge so much that it requires a constant cycle of painting and deck replacement.

Massport is near the end of a 15-year, $50 million program to replace the decks, the asphalt, and concrete making up the roads and a $45 million program to scrape, prime, and repaint the bridge, which was initially covered in about 25,000 gallons of lead paint.

Peter McDonald, a contractor who oversees 25 painters who dangle from precarious places atop the bridge, said traffic and fog complicate the work of fighting rust.

"Everything on the bridge migrates because of the vibration," he said. "Sometimes work has to stop when we can't see."

Bridge officials sometimes have to call the gypsum plant to tell it to switch smokestacks or reduce the amount of steam, which can envelop the bridge and make work next to impossible.

Between March and November, McDonald's painters have spent seven days a week using a steel abrasive to blast away the old paint, which they vacuum from a contained area.

They're in the process of using an airless spray paint to cover the bridge's estimated 225,000 rivets and 50,000 bolts, in all some 45,000 tons of steel.

On a recent tour of the bridge, Joe Staub, the Tobin's acting director, pointed at signs of his staff's challenges: rust dripping down several of the main concrete piers, paint flaking off beams, dislodged rivets beside the roadway, pigeons nesting in beams supporting the upper level, and the refuse dumped by passing drivers.

"You'd be amazed at all the debris we have," said Staub, who oversees 26 toll collectors, the maintenance crews, and works in an office suspended beneath the bridge that shakes whenever a large vehicle passes overhead.

A device above him squawked with the sound of a hawk (to ward off the pigeons) and, in the distance, a truck sent a large boom beneath the lower deck, where inspectors in an attached bucket examined the bottom of the bridge.

He said some days feel like combat, when a bad accident occurs, when police chase scofflaws across the bridge or an LNG tanker shuts down all work and traffic.

Then he pointed at an obstacle no one on his staff will overcome: the line of vehicles that can back up into Revere.

"There's nothing that isn't painful to the commuters," he said. "No one wants to be caught in traffic."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

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[lexicon506]

I say tear it down and invite Calatrava over to build us another showpiece bridge!

[Beton Brut]

And run the Orange Line across it through Chelsea, Revere and Saugus.

[JimboJones]

I'm praying that you were being sarcastic when you called the Zakim bridge a "showpiece".

"It will be world-renowned", "It will be like our own Golden Gate Bridge", etc., etc., etc.

Um, yeah. It's a bridge. Sometimes, it lights up.

That's about it.

[lexicon506]

I see the characteristic Bostonian pessimism has struck you Jimbo. Actually, I wasn't being sarcastic at all. The Zakim is Boston's showpiece bridge, crowning the Big Dig and having found its way onto countless postcards, t-shirts, and those little background shots for TV interviewees based in Boston. Just because it's not internationally recognized doesn't mean it can't be a showpiece bridge. It's instantly become part of the cityscape, for just being "a bridge"?

This is "a bridge":

[nico]

Is it impossible to go under the Mystic River? Trains and lanes

[vanshnookenraggen]

Not impossible but it would truly be a Big Dig 2, a sequel that many people are not too keen to see.

[CJ]

The plus is, its not all city above (where the tunnel would be going). They could use one of the TBM's from the N-S Rail project, just divert it a bit on its way out.

I can dream, eh?

[Charlie_mta]

A long range plan for the Tobin Bridge that I'm thinking of would be to remove it and build a new one upstream. The existing route would be replaced with a low-level draw-bridge carrying light rail and local traffic.

This would remove the expressway and bridge away from the core of Chelsea, thus linking it with the rest of the city and waterfront to the west of the current bridge.

My concept is this:

[vanshnookenraggen]

Good idea for the bridge but I don't think the T would like to have a draw bridge used for the Green Line. Plus, where would you have it connect to the subway? Lechmere?

[Ron Newman]

The Green Line el between Science Park and Lechmere used to have a drawbridge. (I think it's still there but no longer operable)

[vanshnookenraggen]

Exactly, this would be a draw bridge that would go up and down many times a day. I'm sure any competent transit agency could time their headways around this but I don't trust the T.

[Ron Newman]

And I think the old elevated Orange Line had drawbridges across both the Mystic and the Charles.

[vanshnookenraggen]

Yes but these were all BERy built bridges. The MBTA seems to prefer high level fixed bridges (Red Line over Neponset , Orange Line at Wellington) so I would assume they would want the same with any new bridge.

[underground]

I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I'd imagine that the amount of water traffic going through a draw bridge in that spot, coupled with all of the traffic, would create a traffic nightmare. Look at the drawbridge in front of the MOS; it only goes up a few times a week, and every time it does, it snarls Leaveritt Circle for hours.

I think, if you tear down the old Tobin, it has to be replaced with a similar bridge (ugh as in ugly) or with a tunnel (ugh as in, not again!).

[nico]

The tunnel shouldn't be as difficult as the dig. As CJ pointed out, it's not all city and nowhere does it interact with a downtown/financial district like in the proper. This would be a great benefit to both Chelsea and Charlestown as they are separated by a bridge that someone pointed out is actually longer than the Golden Gate.

Van wrote

where would you have it connect to the subway? Lechmere?

If done under the Mystic it could be its own line that runs from Saugus/Revere through Chelsea and Charlestown (Stop at Navy Yard) and conveniently into North Station. (There?s still all that land around the garden yet to be developed and if we can talk about expanding S. station through the post office, we can expand N. Station if necessary as part of those proposed developments) From here it could run down the esplanade (As part of the Storrow Project.) or through downtown Boston w/a stop in Post office Sq. (There are tunnels here that were originally built for a line/stop, but never used.) You'd eliminate the ugly Fidelity bldg and the courtyard you all seem to hate in front of the building across the street on I believe Franklin and Federal and have a north and south bound entrance/exit.

[underground]

^ Another reason to be optimistic about a tunnel replacing the Tobin: it wouldn't need to be as long as the bridge currently is. The bridge is so long because it needs to be really high to keep the waterway beneath navigable. The depth of the tunnel, I'm guessing, would be much shallower than the bridge is high. That being said, I'd hate to be the person who walks into city hall and says, "guess what guys! We're building another tunnel!" Whether or not the job would be easier job than the Big Dig is one thing, but trying to convince everyone in the Commonwealth to under go the project is another. Although, the case could be made that building a tunnel for Route 1 would be way less intrusive than the CA/T; it's not like the bridge has many cross streets or streets running under it while it's over the water.

[vanshnookenraggen]

Any tunnel from North Station to Charlestown would be really hard to pull off and expensive due to:

Orange Line tunnels
Big Dig tunnels
Zakim Bridge
I-93 viaduct
Route 1 tunnels to the Tobin Bridge

The area is so crowded that the only affordable connection would have to be further north and bypass the Navy Yard.

[justin]

Skip North Station: a subway line could go Chelsea> Bunker Hill Monument > Navy Yard> North End > State > P.O.Sq...> S.Station (really deep) >???

[Chris]

Light Rail Line, Chelsea-->Charleston-->North End-->RK Greeway-->Summer St.-->South Boston Bypass-->Dorchester