Bronx-Whitestone Bridge
Coordinates: 40 ° 48 ′ 4 " N , 73 ° 49 ′ 45" W.
| Bronx-Whitestone Bridge | ||
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| use | Road bridge | |
| Convicted |
 Interstate 678
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| Crossing of | East River | |
| place | New York City | |
| Entertained by | Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority | |
| construction | Suspension bridge | |
| overall length | 1149 m | |
| width | 24 m | |
| Number of openings | 3 | |
| Longest span | 701 m | |
| Clear height | 47 m | |
| start of building | June 1, 1937 | |
| opening | April 29, 1939 | |
| planner | Othmar Ammann | |
| location | ||
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The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge (often just Whitestone Bridge or colloquially simply Whitestone ) is a suspension bridge over the East River in New York City , which connects the Bronx with the districts of Whitestone and Malba in the borough of Queens on Long Island . Along with the Triborough Bridge / Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge, it is one of the three bridge connections between Queens and the Bronx.
traffic
The six-lane road bridge is part of Interstate 678, which begins south at John F. Kennedy International Airport , passes Flushing Meadows Park, and the nearby LaGuardia Airport as the Whitestone Expressway leads to the bridge and on the other side to the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Bruckner Expressway joins and continues north as the Hutchinson River Parkway. Like most major bridges in New York, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge is tolled .
description
The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge planned by Othmar Ammann can also be recognized from a great distance by its design reduced to the essential elements of a suspension bridge. The tall, slender steel pillars of the pylons are only connected at their upper end and below the bridge deck by arches made of smooth steel plates. The thin bridge deck, hanging from the barely recognizable suspension ropes, swings with a slight arch from one bank to the other. The bridge deck is 1149 m (3770 ft) long, measured from anchor block to anchor block, and has a clear height of 47 m (157 ft) above MHW .
The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge is a classic example of its time, when suspension bridges, under the influence of deflection theory and cost pressures, became leaner, required less material and therefore cost less, a development that began a year later with the construction of the Tacoma Narrow Bridge. Bridge reached its climax and with its collapse its temporary end.
The 115 m (377 ft) m high pylons were assembled for the first time in a steel structure with hollow cross-sections made from prefabricated elements.
The two suspension cables have a diameter of 53.3 cm (21 inches) and each consist of 9842 galvanized steel wires, which are air-spun into 37 strands of 266 wires each in a hexagonal profile, pressed by hydraulic cable presses into round suspension cables and then to prevent Corrosion coated. They are fixed in large, concrete anchor blocks, which get their distinctive appearance from the fact that their upper side follows the curvature of the downward curved suspension cables.
Today's six-lane bridge deck has a span of 701 m (2300 ft) in the central opening and 224 m (735 ft) across the side openings. The solid wall girder stiffener is only 3.35 m high and 24 m (77 ft) wide. The proportions of the height of the girder to the span of around 1: 209 and of the width of the girder to the span of around 1:30 are much more favorable than with the longer and narrower Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
The bridge still has the eight stay cables that were tensioned in 1940 from the pylon tops to the girder. In 1986 vibration absorbers were installed in the stiffening beam . The high lattice girders installed in 1946 were removed again in 2003. For this purpose, aerodynamically calculated, 2.44 m high, wedge-shaped panels made of GRP were added to the sides of the stiffening beams .
history
Robert Moses , the head of the Triborough Bridge Authority , requested another bridge over the East River after the Triborough Bridge , which opened in 1936, was soon overloaded. In addition, the new airport (today's La Guardia Airport) was to receive a motorway connection to the north and, last but not least, the 1939 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows Park had to get a sufficient connection. The final decision to build the bridge by the Triborough Bridge Authority (TBA) was made in April 1937. Othmar Ammann, the chief engineer of both the port authority and the TBA, was responsible for the planning and execution of the bridge. The flat bridge deck he had chosen (with the advisory support of Leon S. Moisseiff , the leading proponent of deflection theory) was not only more beautiful to look at than the previous trusses and faster to build, it also saved around 2 million dollars and enabled motorists (who back then sat even higher in their vehicles than today) the view over the East River. Ammann was able to complete the bridge in just 23 months, so that it could be opened on April 29, 1939, one day before the start of the world exhibition. At that time it had a total of four lanes and a sidewalk on both sides.
Half a year earlier, David B. Steinman's Thousand Islands Bridge had been opened, followed two months later by his Deer Isle Bridge , whose wind-induced vibrations could not be explained at the time, but could be limited by Steinman by cable stays. The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in November 1940 came as a surprise to the professional world, but raised doubts in the audience about the safety of the new suspension bridges. Othmar Ammann emphatically emphasized that his Bronx-Whitestone Bridge was safe despite occasional slight vibrations, Robert Moses, on the other hand, said that it was not the opinion of the engineer responsible that mattered, but the fears of the motorists who might avoid the bridge and thus the Would decrease revenue. That is why eight stay cables were stretched in soon afterwards to prevent major vibrations. In 1946, large trusses were also installed to stiffen the bridge deck. There were no sidewalks, so that six lanes could be set up. Nevertheless, there were still significant vibrations during severe storms.
In 1998, the Alan G. Davenport Wind Engineering Group at the University of Western Ontario fitted sensors to the bridge to determine how the wind was affecting the bridge. A model of the bridge was examined in the wind tunnel there. A prototype of the planned new bridge deck was built at Lehigh University and tested in lengthy load tests. As a result, this led to the removal of the trusses and the installation of the aerodynamically effective GRP cladding of the side surfaces. In addition, the original concrete road surface was removed and replaced by an orthotropic slab with an epoxy resin- sand mixture as the road surface. These measures resulted in the bridge surviving Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 without damage and without any particular vibrations.
toll
The bridge is subject to a toll . The costs for this in 2018, for a two-axle car, amount to 8.50 US dollars for payment on account or 5.76 US dollars with the E-ZPass . Like all bridges in New York City, Whitestonebridge has been cashless since 2017. This means that it is no longer possible to pay the toll directly. If there is no EZ pass in the vehicle, an invoice will be sent to the vehicle owner.
Web links
- Bronx-Whitestone Bridge on the MTA - Metropolitan Transportation Authority website
- Bronx-Whitestone Bridge Historic Overview on nycroads.com
- Historic photos of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Individual evidence
- ↑ WHITESTONE SPAN OPENED BY MAYOR; New Bronx-Long Island Link Hailed as Symbol of City's Never-Ending Progress April 30, 1939 abstract in the New York Times
- ^ Alan G. Davenport Wind Engineering Group: Facilities on a website of Western University, Faculty of Engineering, London, Ontario, Canada
- ↑ David W. Dunlap: Less Bronx-Whitestone Bridge Yielded More Stability During Hurricane Sandy Article dated June 12, 2013 on cityroom.blogs of the New York Times