Roadway begins to appear on new Tappan Zee Bridge
The roadway will be made up of nearly 7,000 concrete deck panels.
Now you can begin to imagine what it'll be like to drive across the new Tappan Zee Bridge.
The first sections of roadway have been installed on the northbound span where the new crossing curves toward Rockland.
The modest bit of road that drivers will use late next year sits atop the now-familiar steel-blue girders. The new deck is a bit hard to spot from the existing Tappan Zee, given that the future southbound span sits in between, but it's clearly visible from above.
Nearly 7,000 individual concrete road deck panels will combine to form the driving surface for the twin crossings, each three miles long. The new road will handle a heavy workload — an average of 138,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily.
When the first crossing opens in December 2016, drivers will also experience a new kind of ride as the roadway is slightly banked at both ends.
As of Monday, the state Thruway Authority said 70 steel-reinforced road deck panels, each nearly 11 inches thick, have been installed by Tappan Zee Constructors.
The typical panel is 12 feet long and ranges from 22 to 45 feet wide. Weighing up to 74,000 pounds each, the panels are lifted into place by cranes.
Thruway Authority Executive Director Bob Megna called their installation "another positive sign of the progress" on the $4 billion project.
The panels are built off-site and then barged down the Hudson River from the Port of Coeymans near Albany, just like the girder units.
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Unistress, based in Pittsfield, Mass., is making 6,000 of the specialized panels for the approach spans and have completed about 1,400 as part of a $70 million with Tappan Zee Constructors. The company has said it can produce 18 panels a day.
“They’re doing things with the concrete and the steel that we haven’t seen before,” Unistress President Perri Petricca last month told a local TV news station there. “All the re-enforcing steel is galvanized. Very, very stringent requirements for this high strength concrete mix.”
The 973 road deck panels that will be used on the main span, or in between the towers, are being made by the Fort Miller Group in Schuylerville, located northeast of Albany. Those panels are scheduled to be installed next year.
"They are designed to interlock with one another, allowing for swift and safe installation," the Tappan Zee project team wrote on its website.
The upstate company is also producing other concrete precast items for the new bridge, including the median barrier.
Neither Unistress nor Fort Miller Group responded to messages seeking comment.
The final touch for the roadway will be a one-inch polyester concrete overlay to provide motorists with a smooth drive, the Thruway Authority said.
The ride should also be quieter since the new bridge features only 12 expansion joints — devices that absorb energy during expansion and contraction caused by temperature changes — compared to the 198 on the current bridge, which causes that steady thud under your tires.
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By the numbers
- Approach Span Panel Length: 12 feet
- Approach Span Panel Width: 22-45 feet
- Largest panel weight: 74,000 pounds
- Number of Approach Span Panels: 5,960
- Number of Main Span Panels: 973
- Total Number of Concrete Deck Panels: 6,933
Source: New York State Thruway Authority