Long Beach’s Gerald Desmond Bridge replacement will speed cars, trucks …and much bigger ships

For the last twenty-five years, it could be argued that the most important bridge in the US was the Port of Long Beach’s Gerald Desmond Bridge. As a result of falling concrete and traffic jams, the Port of Long Beach is replacing the 46 year old Gerald Desmond Bridge with a new bridge that will improve car and port truck traffic and allow bigger ships to sail under a higher span.

The current Desmond Bridge links the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach facilitating 15,000 truck trips per day, mostly to and from the I-710 freeway. The I-710 is the connector to Southern California freeways, distribution centers and off dock rail yards. The Port of Long Beach notes “nearly 15% of the nation’s waterborne cargo (is) trucked across the bridge.” Sixty thousand cars and trucks travel over the bridge on a daily basis, the Port says. The bridge replacement will be higher and allow for larger ships increasing from 9,000 teus to 12,500 teus, according to Al Moro, executive director, Port of Long Beach. Traffic jams are frequent. If a truck or car breaks down or has an accident, there is no shoulder lane to move the stricken vehicle onto. The new bridge solves this problem, Moro said, because it will have three lanes in each direction instead of two. New breakdown lanes on the outside and inside shoulders will allow for the removal of stricken vehicles. The projected $1.263 billion replacement cost has been the subject of concern by Long Beach city council members and Port commissioners because of several cost increases and schedule delays. The Port now projects the bridge will be delayed by 12-18 months and completed by 2018. Additional costs will be incurred with this delay. Moro explained: “There is a very preliminary estimate indicating the delay costs could be in the range of $70M. However, efforts are underway to determine ways to mitigate the delay…Also, the project budget includes contingencies, both in individual line items of work and a separate contingency fund amount.” Moro told the AJOT during an interview at the bridge construction site that two factors had caused delays and cost overruns: Clearing Away Underground Oil Wells Moro said, “there was little or no limited documentation or mapping for drill sites dating back to the 1900s. Some abandoned drilling holes were dynamited or had debris dumped in as fill and records of how these legacy oil wells were abandoned were scarce. There are still active oil wells on Port property but for the bridge replacement project, the clearance efforts are almost completely done. This was a costly and cumbersome process. Then there was the proposed bridge column that had to be moved slightly. The foundation had to be modified to avoid a drainpipe coming from a power plant located next to the bridge. The result of these adjustments, relocation of oil wells and re-abandonment of legacy oil wells has been increased cost. The modification to the column foundation to avoid a large drain pipe added some costs but also impacted the project schedule.” Design Issues Moro explained that “we adopted a design and build project delivery approach which we considered an advance on the old design, bid, build project delivery process. This allowed us to provide the Port access to the innovation and world renowned bridge building expertise of ARUP, the SFI’s bridge designer. ARUP is an international design and engineering firm that also has expertise in designing structures for seismic activity. However some values in the design were not consistent with practices utilized by the Port or Caltrans (California Department of Transportation, the eventual bridge owner). As a result, we needed to make design changes and this impacted our schedule.” William Corn, project director for the SFI consortium that is building the bridge, told the AJOT that 400 workers will be involved in the construction. Unlike the San Francisco Bay Bridge replacement, which was built with steel imported from China, steel for the new bridge will be bought from a U.S. steel mill. Corn noted that concrete will be sourced from an onsite batch plant and from five other plants offsite. Rebar used in strengthening the concrete is being sourced from a supplier in nearby Gardena, California. Denis Wolcott, a Port spokesman, noted that a major challenge has been to reroute traffic. Construction has necessitated road closures and the diversion of thousands of cars and trucks, which has required the coordination of a construction team. The construction team is working with the Long Beach Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, Caltrans and other agencies. An extensive public information campaign, that includes a free mobile app for phones, provides up to the minute traffic conditions. Moro noted that after the foundations are constructed and columns are raised, “we’ll be using a Moveable Scaffolding System (MSS) to build the superstructure (deck). This replaces ‘falsework’ (a form of scaffolding), although falsework will be required in some sections of the West and East approaches. An MSS is attached to the columns and is “suspended” in air – and provides the forms for the road deck. This actually improves worker safety, and allows for the deck to be built more efficiently. Once one section of a deck is constructed, the MSS then ‘creeps’ along to the next set of columns, is attached, and the deck building process begins again.” The result, Moro noted, is “three spans that once took five months to build can now be built in two and half months or half the time.” Moro also explained: “Foundations are “cast-in-drilled-hole” piles. Cylinders as wide as 8 feet are rotated into the ground (up to about 180 feet), dirt is removed, a steel rebar cage is lowered into the hole, and then concrete is poured. As concrete is poured, a pump is used to extract water that we know accumulates in these holes.” Corn also noted that a chemical detection device, called a ‘sniffer’, is inserted into the piles to detect contaminants in the soil. Contaminated soil is extracted and treated. A gamma detector is used to test the solidity of the concrete. There will be 330 piles dug into the ground supporting 70 columns and 2 towers that will hold up the bridge deck with cable. The bridge structure is built according to ‘a cable stayed’ design that is more efficient than older bridge designs. The load bearing is on the towers and not on the cables such as with a suspension bridge, Moro said. Moro hopes this “will provide a new signature image to the City of Long Beach.” Moro said the permit approval process for the bridge replacement took three years and cost $5 million. The California Coastal Commission, the California Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Coast Guard required permits for the bridge construction. The length and cost required under the California Environmental Quality Act is the subject of growing opposition in California. Contractors and infrastructure supporters say it is an outmoded and overly contentious approval process that increases costs and delays for many projects, hurting the state’s investment climate.