Last Span Of The Tappan Zee Bridge Dismantled VIDEO

NYACK, NY — Tappan Zee Constructors removed the final steel section of the old Tappan Zee Bridge on Monday. The last piece of superstructure of the old bridge, it marks another historic milestone in the project to replace the New York State Thruway over the Hudson River.

The 3.1-mile Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, a twin-span cable-stayed crossing linking Westchester and Rockland counties, fully opened to traffic last summer. The 600-foot-long, 5,500-ton west anchor span — the old bridge's last span above water — was lowered onto barges using strand jacks during a dismantling operation that began late Thursday afternoon.

"The lowering of the last piece of superstructure of the old Tappan Zee Bridge is a historic and timely symbol as we transition from the past to the future," New NY Bridge Project Director Jamey Barbas said in a press release.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the new bridge an "unprecedented investment in New York's transportation infrastructure that will continue to advance the economy in the Hudson Valley and beyond."

In the press release he pointed out that as the old bridge crumbled, it came to symbolize government gridlock.

With 140,000 vehicles per day crossing it, maintenance crews frantically patched holes in the decking while politicians, pundits and neighbors argued for a decade over what to do and how to pay for it.

A post-World War II construction project (planning started in 1949), when it opened in December 1955 the Tappan Zee Bridge became the longest bridge in New York State and was considered a significant engineering accomplishment.

Designed by engineer Emil H. Praeger, the Tappan Zee was the first permanent bridge in the United States to be supported, in part, by buoyant caissons. This caisson design made it possible to construct the bridge at one of the widest points of the Hudson River by reducing the load on the steel piles supporting the main span.

As the final link in the 570-mile New York State Thruway system, the Tappan Zee Bridge stimulated significant economic growth in both Westchester and Rockland counties. Additionally, Rockland experienced a population boom.

The Tappan Zee Bridge was originally designed with six traffic lanes and a median but due to increasing traffic, the Thruway Authority added a seventh lane in the mid-1980s and installed a movable barrier in 1992 to create an extra lane for the morning and evening rush hour. In 1999, the Thruway Authority considered replacing the Tappan Zee due to growing congestion, on-going maintenance and escalating repair costs. Despite 430 meetings, 150 concepts and $88 million, the replacement project went nowhere in a decade under three administrations.

Finally, a new twin-span crossing built to last a century was chosen to replace the Tappan Zee in 2011. Cuomo incorporated all the past studies into a comprehensive accelerated review process and worked with the Legislature to pass a historic design-build law.

As part of the construction of the new bridge, design-builder Tappan Zee Constructors dismantled the old one.

Since 2018, five sections of the 2,415-foot main span of the old Tappan Zee Bridge have been removed via distinct operations:

• Lowering the 532-foot-long, 4,750-ton center of the main span in May 2018.
• Lowering the 6,500-ton east anchor span in January 2019 using explosive charges. Marine salvage experts are in the process of removing the material from the Hudson River.
• Removing steel piece-by-piece from the two remaining cantilever truss sections with barge-based cranes.

TZC transported the recently-lowered west anchor span offsite for further disassembly this afternoon.

In addition, TZC is working with marine salvage experts to remove the old Tappan Zee Bridge's east anchor span from the Hudson River in the coming weeks. The steel is being recovered with the assistance of chains, previously laid on the riverbed, connected to lift barges. Once raised to the waterline, the lift barges will transfer the steel to a submersible barge to transport the structure from the project site.

The Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge is the first cable-stayed bridge across the Hudson River. Featuring eight 419-foot towers standing at a five-degree angle, the twin-span bridge has a total of 192 stay cables that would stretch 14 miles if laid end-to-end. A cable-stayed bridge uses steel cables placed at an angle to connect the bridge deck to vertical towers that extend high above the roadway. More than 220 million pounds of all-American steel was used to build the bridge. Approximately 7,000 workers have contributed to date and nearly 11.5 million work hours have been dedicated to the project.

SEE ALSO: Tappan Zee Bridge Span Comes Down With Controlled Explosion