The Flange Cracked, & The Bridge Closed

A damaged ​“end wedge” has shut down the Grand Avenue Bridge to car travel for nearly a week — with repairs in the works, and city officials hoping the recently renovated Quinnipiac River crossing should open back up to vehicles later on Thursday.

Update: The bridge is now back open to car traffic, as pictured below at around 6 p.m. Thursday.

That’s the latest with the 19th-century bridge that connects Grand Avenue from Front Street in Fair Haven to Quinnipiac Avenue in Fair Haven Heights, and that less than two years ago received a $28 million, on-time-and-under-budget rehab.

Since last Friday, the bridge has been closed to car traffic — even as it’s remained opened to pedestrians and cyclists.

That’s because of a ​“mechanical failure in the locking mechanism of the swing bridge, which needs repair,” Mayor Justin Elicker wrote in an email alert sent to bridge neighbors last Friday. The mayor added that the bridge would be closed to vehicle traffic for roughly a week if not longer as the city obtained necessary parts and made needed repairs.

On Thursday morning, the bridge remained closed to car traffic. But, as City Engineer Giovanni Zinn and city Chief Structural Engineer Zachary Shapiro told the Independent, repairs are in the works and the bridge could open back up to cars in as soon as a few hours.

Shapiro, who was out on the riverine scene with a hard-hatted crew from the construction-and-engineering contractor Mohawk Northeast Inc. Thursday morning, said that the problem in need of repair was a damaged ​“end wedge.” The bridge has four such end wedges, which lock the bridge in place, lift it up, and allow for the structure to safely bear the weight of passing traffic. With one such wedge damaged, he said, the bridge could not safely hold up cars and trucks and other passing vehicles, and so the city shut it down — even as it remained open to pedestrians and cyclists, who could safely travel above.

In a phone interview with the Independent, Zinn said the city is still investigating exactly what went wrong. ​“I think there were operational sequence issues that don’t have much to do with the renovation of the bridge or how recently that was done,” he said. ​“We’re looking at the root causes” of what happened and how make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Zinn lauded Shapiro and bridge tender Mike Dorsey for coming up with a solution for now that fixes the problem and gives the city some time to get a manufacturer to build a new part that will ultimately replace what is there now.

And what exactly is the part that needs to be replaced?

“We had to modify a bushing inside the linking of the wedge,” Zinn said. ​“The flange cracked” and so the city had to ​“remove the flange. It will still work,” he said. But, long term, ​“we do want the bushing to have a flange.”

He said the city will be periodically inspecting the bridge and relevant flange-less bushing to make sure all is well between now and when the city has a new part in place to install. That will likely be in a few months, and will cause the bridge to close for a half-day as the city swaps in the new part.

Zinn said the city should be sending out a press release when this initial set of repairs is done and drivers can head over the bridge again.