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MTA Metro-North Railroad officials expect to award a contract this fall for the replacement of the original cables of the Harlem River Lift Bridge, which provides the only access into Manhattan for all Metro-North trains.

The $30 million project calls for replacing all the original cables that lift the two, 330-foot-long main spans of the bridge, located 4.5 miles north of Grand Central Terminal. The project also includes replacing the electrical control system and most of the wiring, installing a logic control system to computerize control room circuit boards and rehabilitating the elevator from the track level to the operator's room.

"Metro-North must maintain this crucial piece of infrastructure so that it can be used by both train customers and maritime traffic," said President Howard Permut in a prepared statement. "It is vital to the more than 280,000 Metro-North customers and 750 trains that use it each weekday."

Metro-North plans to schedule much of the work during a six-month Coast Guard outage, during which the bridge will not have to be opened on demand.

The project is being funded by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 2010-2014 capital program and a $19 million federal grant.

The bridge was built in 1954 to replace an earlier swing span crossing the Harlem River between Manhattan and the Bronx.