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12/2/2024
Following a 30-hour journey down the Hudson River, the first of three massive arches to support the new Portal North Bridge in New Jersey arrived last week at the construction site, bringing the project closer to completion.
The bridge carries more than 450 daily Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains and 200,000 daily passengers over the Hackensack River, which is a critical link in the congested territory between Newark, New Jersey, and Penn Station in New York City.
The two-track, moveable span is a major bottleneck and source of delay, particularly when the aging bridge malfunctions during opening and closing for maritime traffic, according to Amtrak and NJ Transit.
The existing bridge was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad and opened in 1910. A two-track bridge will replace the old bridge with a modern, high-level fixed span that does not open or close, eliminating the movable components and risk of malfunction. The new bridge will rise more than 50-feet over the river and, including the approaches, span nearly 2.5 miles of the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak officials said in a press release.
The bridge replacement project reached 75% completion with the arrival and installation of the first of the three arches.