THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 3, 1996 TAG: 9605030478
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CINDY CLAYTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: YORKTOWN LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
With each step as carefully choreographed as a water ballet, Tidewater Construction Corp. begins working Saturday against the state's stopwatch to build a new George P. Coleman Memorial Bridge. The Virginia Beach company has 12 days, or 288 hours, to take away the old half-mile span and to replace it with six enormous plug-in pieces so thoroughly prefabricated in Norfolk that light poles and traffic signs are attached.
The race against time begins about 6 a.m. after Virginia Department of Transportation crews close the 44-year-old bridge over the York River between Yorktown and Gloucester Point.
If things go right for Tidewater on the $72.7 million project, the new Coleman Bridge will reopen at 6 a.m. on May 16.
If things don't go as planned, the company can be penalized $8,000 for every hour it is late, regardless of the weather. Every day the bridge is closed, commuters must continue to drive 75 miles to get across the York River.
``It's going to take a great effort from everybody,'' said Bill Eskins Jr., the project manager for Tidewater. ``It's all got to be like clockwork.''
As the largest double-swing bridge in the country, its four lanes are designed to carry 30,000 vehicles a day over the York's swift currents, where Lord Cornwallis scuttled his Revolutionary War fleet.
The old two-lane bridge opened in 1952 and was named for Virginia's second highway commissioner. Officials estimated that it would carry 15,000 vehicles a day, but its daily count increased to about 28,000.
Now, the Coleman will be widened from 31 to 77 feet. Its concrete roadway will offer better traction than the current asphalt and steel. And there will be 10-foot emergency shoulders and a concrete center barrier.
In August, one-way toll gates will open on U.S. Route 17 on the north side of the bridge. The fee for motorists who cross infrequently will be $2. Commuters will pay 50 cents.
Eskins said the exchange of each old section of the bridge for a new one requires such precision that Tidewater has an hour-by-hour plan.
``All that stuff will be timed out so that we know how long it takes to do each step,'' Eskins said.
The project will make engineering history. It marks the first time in Virginia that a bridge has been built away from the body of water it will span, and floated into place, section-by-section, ready to carry traffic, said James C. Cleveland, VDOT district administrator.
The six new sections were built at Norfolk International Terminals, 30 miles from Yorktown, on temporary support pilings. Sitting side-by-side, each half of the new bridge jutted from the shore into the Elizabeth River at NIT like twin spans pointing toward Craney Island in Portsmouth.
Meanwhile, off Yorktown, the concrete piers under the existing Coleman crossing were reinforced to hold the additional weight of the new, expanded swing bridge. The Coleman has two sections that swing open so that ships can pass.
Three of the new sections built in Norfolk already have been barged to the York River. The third piece left NIT on Wednesday. The three remaining pieces will be lifted off the pilings and floated to the York during the shutdown.
The first piece of the old bridge will be extracted on Saturday, beginning the painstaking process of positioning the barges, moving out the other five sections and replacing them.
During that time, Eskins and Harvey Clayton, the project engineer at Yorktown, will get little sleep.
``It's a lot of work,'' said Eskins. ``It's more coordination than anything else.'' That teamwork will be shared among crews working around the clock.
It takes two barges to move each section - new and old. Each barge is filled with water, and fitted with a steel support that looks like a huge scaffold.
The process starts, Clayton said, when the barges and supports are partially submerged, then nudged under the section that is to be moved.
As the supports are moved into position under the section, Clayton said, the clearance is only about one foot.
Every movement must be precise.
Once everything is in place, water inside the barges is pumped out. Air takes its place, and the barges slowly rise, gently lifting the bridge section off its pilings. The same process will be used in reverse to position the new sections.
``We'll basically have the whole river conglomerated with barges and cranes and pumps and loud noises and all kinds of screaming and yelling,'' said Eskins.
``Everything has to be planned and the weather has to be perfect,'' said Eskins. ``There's too much at stake here, and everybody has to be informed.''
The penalty for being one week late could be $1.3 million. ``That's more than they'll let me squander,'' said Eskins.
If the assembly is finished early, the contractor will receive $4,000 for every hour ahead of schedule.
Similar plans are used by the state to reward or penalize contractors on many types of construction projects.
The original contract with the state, which Tidewater won in 1993, provided for two 12-day shutdowns. But the company declined to take the second shutdown and was rewarded with an up-front incentive payment of $1.2 million.
Tidewater Construction has worked on several bridges and tunnels in the area, including the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and the Berkley Bridge on Interstate 264 in Norfolk.
``This is the largest project we have going on in the state at this time,'' said Bob Spieldenner, a VDOT spokesman. ``It's a nationally known project.''
Spieldenner said VDOT engineers all over the state and national engineering magazines are interested in how Tidewater will make the bridge project come together.
``It's going to take incredible cooperation, teamwork and just plain hard work,'' he said. MEMO: VDOT operates a toll-free, 24-hour Coleman Connection Hotline. The
number is 1-800-777-YORK.
DETOUR ROUTES, BRIDGE FACTS AND MORE/A2, A4
ILLUSTRATION: GARY C. KNAPP
The third of six sections of the new Coleman Bridge heads toward the
York River.
KEYWORDS: COLEMAN BRIDGE by CNB