It is being built by
Tappan Zee Constructors.
In June, 2015, the first prefabricated section of three 12' tall and 400' long girders was lifted into place by the
Left Coast Lifter. (
video) This is the first of 31 miles of girders to build the first 4-lane, 3.1-mile bridge. A second bridge is being built in parallel so that each direction of travel will have its own 4-lane bridge. The girders are placed on pedestals on top of the pier cap. The pedestals "
contain structures called 'seismic isolation bearings,' made of steel and a rubberlike material designed to offer some flexible movement (in case of earthquakes) and also to withstand the day-to-day pounding from trucks. The three-girder assemblages will soon be joined by twin-girder assemblages that will carry prefabricated electrical, plumbing and communications lines and complete the width of the span."
The 328'x100' Left Coast Lifter can lift 1,900 tons, and it came to this site through the Panama Canal. The Tappan Zee prefabricated sections weigh between 900 and 1,100 tons. The previous job for this "world's largest floating crane" was to help build the replacement of the earthquake-damaged eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The crane has three 806hp diesel powered generators to drive the cable winches. The 6,750 ton crane was built in 2009 near Shanghai.
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Tito Arevalo posted
4600 with the Left Coast Lifter. |
The Left Coast Lifter has also been used to help rebuild Amtrak's Bridge over Spuyten Duyvil Creek.
In July, 2016, a crane boom collapsed across all of the lanes of the old bridge. Fortunately, no one was hurt. It was one of the 28 cranes working on the bridge. It was doing the routine task of installing piling using a vibratory hammer.
Investigations did not have much to report three days later. (Most pictures show the crumpled boom laying over the old bridge. This link shows the crumpled boom at the crawler base.) The crane was working on one of the 1000 piles needed by the bridge. A pile is a steel tube up to 6' in diameter and 300' long. But Jeff J. Loughlin, the business manager of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 137, had a theory. The Manitowoc MLC 300 crawler crane with a 256' boom was operating from the deck of the new bridge. Jeff's theory is "
the pile had struck a very soft spot of river mud and had begun to sink rapidly, jolting the 60-ton hammer into a rapid drop and putting a particular strain on the boom, which buckled." He explained that with an old crane, the operator could take his foot off the break and allow the hammer to free fall and avoid stressing the boom. But modern cranes have a hydraulic braking system that limits the descent rate to 800 feet per minute. The operator had 30 years of experience manipulating cranes. I assume a drug test can be done within three days so that issue has been ruled out.
In August, 2016 the "halfway done" milestone was reached. This posting includes a slide show of eight pictures. The sixth picture shows how the roadway concrete is pumped from barges. Concrete plants were built on barges so that they did not have to run a lot of trucks through the adjoining communities. They also avoided long truck runs to build a 3-mile long bridge. The eighth photo shows the cranes and the blue form blocks that are raised after each of the 26 segments of a tower is built and cured. The cables vary in size from 11" to 24" in diameter with some of the biggest being 800 feet long.
In December, 2016 it hit the milestone of all eight 419' high towers being completed.
NYC CBS News has a list of its articles concerning the Tappan Zee.
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| Satellite image captured Jan, 2017 is probably at least two years old. |
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Satellite image captured Dec, 2017
I included the barges on the north side of the bridge because they are probably supporting the construction |
I learned about this construction from some Facebook postings.
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Tito Arevalo posted
Manitowoc 4600 ringer Crane |
Peter Cerniglia
posted six photos with the comment: "
Tappan Zee bridge in New York." The comments on the photos are my own.
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| 3: This is probably one of the 60-ton hammers mentioned above that the crane crash described above was using. |
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| 4: During off hours they raise the tugboat assigned to the barge out of the water. I assume this is done to make it more difficult to steal or vandalize it. I've seen cranes around here hoist an air compressor in the air during off hours for the same reason. |
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| Screenshot from the video on the referenced page. |
Update:
OSHA finds faulty equipment caused the Tappan Zee Manitowoc MLC300 crane collapse. It seems like a $13,000 fine for a $4 billion contract is barely a slap on the pinkie.
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Chris Spence posted
93 ton edge girder... 4100 tappen zee bridge ny yesterday |
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Chris Spence posted
30 ton floor beam. 4100 tappen zee bridge ny stretched out getting that Sunday $$ local 417
Never seen a cab relocated like that
Was trying to get a good pic but I'm the signal man didn't have time to.
several 4100 have moved relocated cabs.
I ran this crane on the Biloxi Bay Bridge around 10 years ago! Traylor Brothers right? Yea traylor bros. |
Aaron Brown
posted two photos with just the comment: "New York." Fortunately, the comments confirmed these were of the Tappan Zee accident.
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Chris Spence posted two photos with the comment:
got a Saturday in on new tappen zee bridge in ny, they added a 100' jib onto the 4600. She's got 400' of stick now
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While looking for another bridge project in NY State, I found
a highlights page with explanations of the various phases of construction and photos. One phase of note is that the 750 ton crossbeam between the towers was prebuilt and lifted as a unit by the "I Lift NY" barge crane.
The final girder assembly was placed in October, 2016.
The towers were completed Dec 2016 and the main span was connected to the approaches Feb 2017.
It is interesting how pictures float around the web and show up months later.
Peter Cerniglia
posted two photos with the comment: "
Here are a couple of pictures of the 4600 ringer at the Tappanzee Bridge in New York we have been running with 300 for the bone and we just added 100 foot of jib."
wow 400 ft sweet
That runs a # 27 boom for the jib. Same boom as what's in a 4100W ringer. That thing is an animal!!
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Robert LaChappelle posted
4100 ringer erecting MR 608 Tappan Zee bridge NY
Wow must ave alot boom on that 4100 Ringer that's the Bob hill 4100 it's got 240 or 260 |
Bob Dahringer
posted ten photos with the comment: "
Passed by the new Tappan Zee Bridge this morning, still lots going on."
I think that is the MLC 300 that came down last year.
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Bob Dahringer commented on a posting
West towers on the Tappan Zee.
[A couple of Potain tower cranes. There are currently (May, 2017) four working on the bridge] |
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Robert LaChapelle posted
Getting ready to jack down and dismantle MR608's Tappan Zee Bridge New York |
Blane Tidwell posted five photos with the comment: "
MLC 300 manitowic didn't make it but a few months on this job."
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| Ben Stalvey commented on the above posting |
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| John T. Collinson commented on the above posting |
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| John T. Collinson commented on the above posting |
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Dismantle of the first MR608 at the Tappan Zee Bridge.
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| Rich Reither commented on his posting |
Ben Stalvey
posted a request for pictures of barge-mounted 4600s. Quite a few of the comments featured a yellow-boom ringer working on this bridge.
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John McAuliffe commented on Ben's posting
Tappan Zee |
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| John McAuliffe commented on Ben's posting |
John also provided
a video.
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| Joey Dejulio commented on Ben's posting |
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| Joey Dejulio commented on Ben's posting |
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| Joey Dejulio commented on Ben's posting, cropped |
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Richard Nathanson posted
Tappan Zee Bridge New York
Wow top notch 4100 ringers. These old cranes take alot skill to run. They can def wear a operator out. Ben Stalvey if you understand what happens between the levers and the exhaust stack they are a breeze to run and at the end of the day you step out of the cab as spry as a ruttin' buck. Great comment Mr Leonard.. your spot on. Most young bucks have no idea that the ole 4100 was probably the best machine they built. Notice that the machines are time proven reliable conventional and they could have picked what ever type machines they wanted to. Mast was 140, cut down to 70 to fit under the bridge. 30 rigs there at 1 time with 2 potains. Yeah they tried a similar pick in the bay and put one in the drink. Wasn't pretty |
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Lynn Johnson commented on Richard's posting
A couple more in action recently
These are real nice machines. Day in day out very hard to beat for a wide variety of work. |
Everything about this project was big, even the yellow spreader beam.
The above must be working on the second span because the first span is done and the old bridge is closed.
And the old bridge is being dismantled:
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Paul Galbraith posted
More Tappan Zee Bridge passing the Trash Train
[northbound] |
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| Dennis D'Angelo commented on Paul's posting |
Keith Eller
posted three photos.
Dennis DeBruler Photos of the new Tappan Zee bridge.
Some of the 150 50' long, 40-ton deck panels were used to make county bridges: http://www.wellsvilledaily.com/.../parts-of-tappan-zee....
133 of the 150 panels were sold for a $1 each. And 29 bargeloads of bridge debris were added to artificial reefs off Long Island: https://www.nytimes.com/.../tappan-zee-bridge-artificial.... (payware)
Taking the old bridge apart in pieces must of made a lot of jobs: https://www.nytimes.com/.../tappan-zee-bridge-new-york... (payware)
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A few days after I found the NY Times article that they would not used "energetic felling," I saw a video of controlled demolition. It is interesting that they did not bother to remove the equipment on the deck over the left side before they blew down the span.
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Sreenshot at -0:31 from video from share
If you scroll down in abc7ny you can access the above video without Facebook. If you scroll down even further, there is a video reporting that traffic will be shutdown on the new bridge during demolition. Around 1:30 on that video it explains why they switched from a plan to dismantle to a plan of controlled demolition: they discovered "structural issues" that invalidated the dismantlement plants. |
This explosion even made it into the Chicago Tribune as a photo with a caption even though a local derailment and shutdown of the Heritage Corridor commuter service on 1/14/2019 didn't make it into the Tribune. (I looked hard for the CN derailment news.)
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Chicago Tribune 1/16/2019, p15
An explosion from a demolition Tuesday brings down a section of the oldTappan Zeeo Bridge on the Hudson River near Tarrytown, N.Y. The bridge was operational from 1955 to 2017 and was replaced by a span officially named the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge. [The current governor's Dad, who was also a NY governor.] (Seth Wenig/AP) |
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FoxNews (source)
In addition to this still, the article include a "raw video" that allows you to watch the smoke blow away and zooms out to a wide angle shot. "State contractors used explosive charges to detonate vertical support columns on the eastern support portion of the bridge, sending the structure crashing into the Hudson River. A set of orange buoys on the water were connected to netting to help control the debris once it hit the water.
The steel from the bridge will be recovered by chains that have been laid on the riverbed, according to officials....The demolition had been set for Saturday, but it was postponed due to heavy winds. There are plans to dismantle the western portion without explosives sometime this year. Original plans called for the Tappan Zee to be removed piece by piece and avoid the use of explosives, which could have an impact on Hudson River fish habitats. Environmental experts, however, determined the old bridge was structurally unsound, preventing workers from continuing the piecemeal takedown." This article has a link to another article about the bridge being used to craete artificial reefs.
Darrell Colpo There was some issue with wooden pilings under the old bridge being slowly but surely being eroded by bugs, parasites because of where the wood comes from. They knew for a while it had to be replaced. |
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Screenshot from lohud (pay count) They are lowering the western span down to a barge.
[If you scroll down in the article, there is a gallery of 46 photos of its construction. Even further down in the article is 62 photos of the demolition.] |
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lohud (pay count), photo 26 of 46
[I did not understand that the articulated spans are a rather small part of the total length of the bridge until I saw this photo.] |
Enis Boric
posted three photos with the comment: "
TAPPAN ZEE BRIDGE , TARRYTOWN, NY."
David Whitehead Are they still working on that?
Enis Boric
David Whitehead there’s just a couple of barges left. They are claming out the remaining concrete that was demoed from the old bridge.
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Lucibello Heavy Equipment photography
posted seven photos with the comment: "Throwback to some of the floating cranes on the Tappan Zee bridge job. Some notable highlights is the Weeks 531 Clyde 42 500 ton whirley and the ZPMC left coast lifter."
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