Architects Unveil Preliminary Drawings For Narberth Avenue Bridge

The Narberth Ad Hoc Bridge Committee met with an engineer and architects on Wednesday night to discuss the removal of the Rockland Avenue Bridge and preliminary design plans for the Narberth Avenue Bridge replacement.

The start of the project to demolish the Rockland Avenue Bridge, an overpass which was built by the now-defunct Pennsylvania Railroad, will probably be in the late summer or early fall, said Craig Suhoskey, an engineer with Pennoni Associates Inc. Consulting Engineers in King of Prussia.

Suhoskey said Sept. 1 might be a possible start date and the project will be “a single crane operation.”

“The good thing about demo work is it’s year round,” Suhoskey said.

The work will be done overnight when the Amtrak trains are not running on the tracks that sit below the overpass.

Demolition will begin about 10 p.m. or midnight and continue until 5 a.m., Suhoskey said. “You can’t pull the beams out when there’s active rail traffic,” he explained.

The estimated cost of the removing the Rockland Avenue overpass is $600,000 and the total budget for the project is $1.4 million, Suhoskey said.   

Meanwhile, the start of the demolition and construction for the Narberth Avenue overpass is a minimum of two or three years away, Suhoskey said.

“It’s not an easy design and it’s multi-agency reviews, including Amtrak,” Suhoskey said when asked about the start date after the meeting. Narberth needs Amtrak’s approval for the project because the bridge is a vehicular and pedestrian overpass above Amtrak’s railway, Suhoskey said.

Three quarters of the bridge sit in Narberth, while one corner of it sits in Lower Merion Township, said Daniel McCoubrey, an architect for Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates of Philadelphia.

The only complication that could cause would be if the property owner in Lower Merion refused to grant a temporary easement or right of way, then the borough would have to rely on the Lower Merion municipality for the right of way acquisition, Suhoskey said.

At last night’s meeting, Suhoskey and McCoubrey discussed preliminary design ideas for the Narberth Avenue Bridge replacement.

The ad hoc committee’s request for a six-foot-wide sidewalk on either side of the overpass’ roadway will be possible, Suhoskey said. 

The roadway itself will be about 20 feet wide, from curb to curb on one side of the bridge, and about 23 feet wide on the other side of the bridge, he said. “We couldn’t make a symmetrical bridge here because the approachments aren’t symmetrical … There’s slopes coming in,” Suhoskey said.

McCoubrey  and another architect from Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates showed the ad hoc committee some preliminary drawings of the new bridge.

He explained that the bridge has no piers, just support walls.  It was intentionally designed to look like a wall, in order to give the bridge continuity with the buildings on either side of it, McCoubrey said.

The sides of the bridge have some sections of fencing which “gives you a sense of a wall but with fences through, so that you have some views,” McCoubrey said.

The bridge will be made of poured concrete, with the option of having a brick façade on the exterior, and a graphic along the top portion of the wall, which could say “Narberth Borough 1895” or something else that the borough chooses, McCoubrey said.

Heidi Boise, chairwoman of the Ad Hoc Bridge Committee, said they might want to consider having artwork on the wall of the bridge, rather than brick. 

“It would be nice if there could be something artsy … colorful … even if we brought an artist in,” Boise said.

After seeing several preliminary design drawings, Boise said, “This looks great.  What’s the next step?”

Suhoskey said it would be important for the ad hoc committee to decide on the aesthetic design and whether they wanted to use concrete or brick on the façade.

“It changes the way we design the bridge,” Suhoskey said. “The loading is different with the brick versus the concrete. Bricks versus concrete, believe it or not, every pound counts. Bricks are lighter.”

In terms of materials, the brick would cost more than concrete, Suhoskey said. 

But McCoubrey said there were long-term benefits to doing something that was easily maintainable. “That’s why we though concrete with some sort of masonry was the way to go,” McCoubrey said.

Boise also said she would like to “incorporate something fun with the lighting” along the bridge. However, later in the discussion, she said she was concerned about the cost and wondered if the borough should forgo aesthetic lighting.

Borough Manager William J. Martin encouraged Boise not to forgo aesthetics.

“This bridge has been here for 107 years.  Design it the way you want it to be.  It’s not going away,” Martin said.  “It’s been here 100 years.  It’s going to be here another hundred.  You’re going to be walking by every day … you don’t want to short-sheet yourself aesthetically.  There may be money to get.”

The ad hoc committee plans to hold its next meeting with Suhoskey and McCoubrey March 16.