What started as a routine bridge inspection during the summer of 2003 has turned into one of the most exciting and dramatic construction projects in Maine’s history.
When they examined the 72-year-old Waldo-Hancock Bridge that spans the Penobscot River between Prospect and Verona Island, engineers from Maine’s Department of Transportation (DOT) discovered more corrosion than expected in the main suspension cables. Long-term repair of the once award-winning but no longer safe bridge would have necessitated closing the bridge for up to a year. Because such action would have been economically disastrous to the region, the state decided to replace the bridge. Instead of having the usual ten years to design, plan, and build a new bridge, D.O.T. engineers were faced with the challenge of designing one with visual appeal using materials that would last for many years – and to build it immediately.
All this in a state where winter, according to many, lasts eight months out of twelve and bridge builders must work in the wind and cold, rain and snow, hundreds of feet above the rushing waters of a mighty river.
By November of 2003, the state had taken by eminent domain five acres of land and a 55-year-old restaurant on the Prospect side of the bridge, paying the owners $225,000. On the Verona side, the state made an amicable purchase of campground property.
The original bridge cost $846,000 in 1931. Twenty-two years later, in 1953, tolls charged had paid it off, and for the next 50 years people traveled across the Waldo-Hancock Bridge without paying.
The new bridge will cost a whopping $85 million in 2006 dollars. Spending that kind of money for a bridge can leave a sour taste, so the D.O.T.’s designers and engineers came up with some sweeteners.
The residents of Prospect, Verona and Bucksport, the towns nearest to Fort Knox, the area’s leading historical site and tourist attraction, wanted the new bridge to keep the feeling of their mid-nineteenth century granite fort. Since using granite for the new bridge was out of the question due to its prohibitive cost, bridge designers had to come with another way to make the new bridge fit in.
Because the Washington Monument had been built during the same period as Fort Knox, the 1860s, bridge designers borrowed the monument’s obelisk shape for the two pylons, or vertical shafts, on either side of the bridge that will hold the cables supporting the roadway.
The word pylon comes from the Egyptian for gate. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, defines pylon as “a tower for supporting either end of a number of wires over a long span.” Perfect.
At the time of building the Washington Monument one of the many styles in fashion was Egyptian Revival. Throughout the nineteenth-century, publications of archaeological expeditions maintained the public’s interest in Egyptian styles and shapes, including the obelisks and pylons, and influenced everything from jewelry and household furniture to funerary and memorial monuments.
Visitors can go to the top of the Washington Monument, and the DOT designers decided to include an elevator in the Prospect pylon and to build an observatory near the top, 420 feet above ground. The townspeople of Bucksport, Prospect and Verona found this added attraction appealing, so the DOT is building the road to the Prospect pylon and observatory from the fort’s grounds. The Friends of Fort Knox will operate the observatory under the auspices of the Department of Conservation.
The new bridge will be the first in this country and only the second in the world (the first is in Taiwan) to incorporate a cradle system. The cradles are the places on the pylons where the cables that hold up the bridge pass from one side to the other. The cables are, so to speak, “cradled” as they pass through the pylon. Also new is the method that will permit the epoxy strands within a cable to be replaced individually.
The old bridge was a steel suspension bridge of four poles holding heavy cables of painted steel that were anchored into concrete embedded in the earth on either side of the river. The new bridge, which will be 2,040 feet long and 447 feet high at its highest point Ñ twice as high as the original bridge – is a cable-stay bridge with many nine-inch-thick cables holding up the road deck. On the Verona side, the pylon sits on a foundation of 288 I-beams. At the Prospect end, the foundation is supported by ledge. Those foundations support the pylons and the cables through the cradle system, which holds up the bridge’s road deck.
By December 2003, well before all of the many different contracts had been negotiated, workers had blasted ledge, placed footings for concrete and started building the lower pylons below the road deck.
The bridge is being built in three directions: over the river, back towards the approach roads, and up the pylons. By the end of 2005, the building of the pylons will be completed; by the summer of 2006, the roadway will meet in the middle. By late 2006, the bridge will be finished and ready for travel.
The road deck is about 150 feet above the river. Each day workers have to climb zigzag staging to get to work. Tower cranes lift the reinforcing steel and concrete to build the pylons. The cranes are 500 feet high; the pylons are 440 feet high. The tower crane operators must climb 400 feet to reach the crane cab each day. They don’t come down for meals or for calls of nature. They bring with them the day’s food and drink and a chamber pot of sorts, and they keep a tiny microwave oven up there.
On the road deck a form traveler, custom-made in China for this bridge, forms cast-in-place segments of the main and back spans of the road deck. The concrete is laid with a lot of rebar, a word invented in 1953 that the Tenth Edition defines as “a steel rod with ridges for use in reinforced concrete.” The construction teams aim at a fifteen-day cycle of placing four segments of the back span and main span on both pylons.
Carol Morris, the DOT’s spokesperson for the new bridge, said the bridge is being paid for by a combination of state and federal funds. Some are part of the transportation funds regularly allocated to all states from the federal government to maintain the nation’s transportation infrastructure which, of course, includes the repair or replacement of a bridge that connects U.S. Route 1 on either side of a major river. Some are state bonds such as the one just approved by Maine voters. Some are special long-term GARVEE (Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle) bonds, which are funds borrowed in expectation of future federal funding.
“This is the first time Maine has ever used a GARVEE bond,” Morris said, explaining that because many bridges and other large structures built during the Depression are now aging and needing replacement, states are having to borrow money based on future federal funding.
“Exactly what percentage of each of those funding sources will be used to cover the $85 million is still unknown, as the Maine DOT is still in the process of securing funding,” she said in mid-November. Normally funding sources are found before construction begins, she explained, but in this case the DOT needed to begin building a replacement bridge immediately because engineers did not know how successful long-term strengthening of the Waldo-Hancock Bridge might be. That meant construction had to begin before engineers even had a final design, let alone funding.
Thomas Doe, Project Manager for the Maine DOT, who claims he’s lost count of the bridges he’s built, said of the new bridge, “This is a very intriguing structure, both for its many unique attributes such as the observatory, the cable-stay system with all its protective layers, and the methods we’re using to deliver the project on time in less than half the time usually needed. It’s been very exciting, but frustrating as well.” Asked for an example beyond the still up-in-the-air funding, he replied, “How are we going to satisfy all the permitted requirements while maintaining the delivery schedule?”
Doe had planned to retire before the new bridge came up, but couldn’t resist such an intriguing project, so, he said, “I stayed on to do it.” Asked if, despite the frustrations, he’s finding the project rewarding, he replied, “Oh, yes, very much so.”
For further information go to the bridge website: www.waldohancockbridge.com. For more information on the stay cable system, go to
www.ctlgroup.com/webcam.asp.
Dyers v. Maine
Robert and Paul Dyer, who own the Sail Inn and the 5 acres of commercial Route 1 and deep-water waterfront property taken by the state for $225,000, lodged a Complaint for Wrongful Taking and a Demand for a Jury Trial on Sept. 29, 2005. The Dyers are also suing the state for Wrongful Compensation.
Their complaint was heard by the Maine Claims Commission, which found the state owed the Dyers $470,000, or more than double what the state had paid, which figure is nowhere near what the Dyers’ real estate experts estimate the property and the value of their 55 year-old restaurant business is worth, according to the Dyers’ brother Dick, who is not involved in the lawsuit, but who is acting as his brothers’ public relations representative. Of the state’s taking the property and business she and her husband had started in 1948, Vera Dyer, the brothers’ mother, summed up what she thinks of it in a word, saying, “It’s reprehensible.” Of the empty building that once housed the Sail Inn Restaurant, she said, “I try not to look at it,” and added, “people should know the state can do this to you.”
Name the Bridge
– You can name the new bridge. If you go to the special “Help Name the Bridge” section, you will find what names other Mainers have suggested. It’s fun, so join in. You may e-mail your ideas for names at the following website, www.waldohancockbridge.com. Otherwise mail your suggestions for a bridge name, along with your name and address to: New Bridge Names, c/o Senate Republican Office, 3 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333-0003.