Bridge Known for Causing LIRR Delays to Be Replaced

A bridge that is known for causing Long Island Rail Road delays several times per year will be replaced, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Wednesday.

The current bridge that carries the Long Island Rail Road over Post Avenue at the Westbury Station is deteriorated and has been in service for 102 years.

Does this mean no more LIRR delays for thousands of commuters on the Port Jefferson and Ronkonkoma branches after a truck strikes the bridge? The MTA says those delays are expected to be reduced.

The bridge has been struck by trucks between five and nine times per year over the past six years, according to the MTA.

The MTA says the new bridge would:

• Improve the safety of vehicular traffic.
• Meet the latest standards and requirements of the New York State Department of Transportation.
• Increase the clearance to 14 feet above the roadway. It would be a full two feet and two inches higher than the current clearance of 11 feet, 10 inches. This is expected to improve train service by reducing the number of times over-height trucks strike the bridge.
• Be able to accommodate a third Main Line track, which is in line with Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed LIRR Expansion project.

“With the award of this contract, we’re working to improve Main Line train service with a modern bridge with a higher clearance that will reduce bridge strikes, and the train delays that can result,” LIRR President Patrick A. Nowakowski said in a press release. “And by using the design-build contracting method, we’re doing this in the most efficient, and fastest way possible.”

The construction work, projected for October 2017, would cause one weekend train service outage on the Main Line, LIRR officials said.

The contract for the Post Avenue bridge reconstruction was awarded to Halmar International Inc., an engineering and construction company based in Nanuet. Halmar’s proposal of $9.7 million was $1.6 million below the LIRR’s cost estimate for the project.

About 17 percent of the subcontracting work on the bridge will be performed by minority-owned, woman-owned and disadvantaged business enterprises, the MTA says.

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