(rshsdepot) (2nd) New York Central Railroad float bridge, NYC, NY

["Jim Dent" <james.dent_@_itochu.com>]

Hopefully a better (and easier to read) copy of that last post


=46rom the NY Times...

December 10, 2001
Ferry at Riverfront Seen as Gateway to Wall St.
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Travelers who funnel through the overcrowded subway station at Broadway a
nd
72nd Street are so accustomed to feeling like cattle that they may welcom
e
the chance to be treated like freight.
Waterborne freight, that is.
Under a new plan for Riverside Park South, being built between the Hudson
River and the 13-block-long Trump Place development, a 90-year-old New Yo
rk
Central Railroad float bridge at the foot of 69th Street would be turned
into a landing for small, high-speed ferries.
Abandoned as a gateway to America, it would re-emerge as a gateway to Wal
l
Street. And, Donald J. Trump said last week, "It will take a lot of press
ure
off the 72nd Street subway."
That was not its original purpose. The float bridges that once lined the
Port of New York were designed to transfer freight cars from waterside ra
il
yards to barges called car floats, on which they were taken out to ships 
or
to rail lines in New Jersey that connected with the rest of the country.
Like many such structures, Float Bridge No. 4 at 69th Street has a pair o
f
hinged bridge decks suspended by cables from a barnlike overhead housing.
Motors inside that housing lifted and lowered the decks to align them wit
h
the floats, whose position depended on the tides and the loads they carri
ed.
Unused for decades, the renovated 69th Street bridge would be adapted for
commuters through the addition at the far end of a gangway and a boarding
platform known as a spud barge.
The landing could open in the fall of 2003, said Michael W. Bradley,
executive director of the Riverside South Planning Corporation, a nonprof
it
organization formed by Mr. Trump and five civic groups to design Riversid
e
Park South and the towers along its edge.
Neighborhood opponents wonder whether a landing would be an intrusive ste
p
toward commercialization of the park. They question the financing of the
project and the speed with which it is being reviewed. And they ask how m
any
people would forgo the subway for a ferry that could only be reached on f
oot
across steeply sloping riverfront parkland.
"There are no buses," said Madeleine Polayes, president of the Coalition 
for
a Livable West Side. "You couldn't get a car or a cab down there. And if 
we
ever get a real winter, who's going to walk down there?
"It's not that we're against ferries," she said. "We just think there's a
better place to put it."
But Arthur E. Imperatore Jr., president of NY Waterway, said a 69th Stree
t
stop would present a "very attractive opportunity for creating a new
commuter ferry to Lower Manhattan."
He envisions service from the World Financial Center or Pier 11, near Wal
l
Street, to 69th Street, where there might be a ticket office, waiting roo
m
and perhaps a coffee stand.
"It need not be too elaborate," he said. "It can be designed into the fab
ric
of the park so that it can be used by the community."
Last month, NY Waterway began ferry service linking East 90th Street and
Pier 11. A one-way ticket is $5; a monthly pass costs $150. On this line 
are
new 97-passenger, 65-foot Super Otter class ferries that reach a top spee
d
of 35 miles per hour.
Built by Allen Marine in Sitka, Alaska, they are, in essence, successors 
to
the "railroad navy" =97 hundreds of lighters, barges, tugs, scows and tan
kers
that moved railroad freight around the archipelago of New York Harbor and
across 80 or 90 float bridges in the port.
Float Bridge No. 4 is "one of the most significant marine structures
remaining in the city," said Thomas R. Flagg, author of "New York Harbor
Railroads in Color" (Morning Sun Books, 2000).
Designed and patented in 1911, it corrected for the twisting forces
encountered when car floats listed during loading and, Mr. Flagg said,
"showed less inclination to dump boxcars into the river." Almost every
subsequent transfer bridge in the Port of New York had that design, he sa
id.
Preservation of the bridge was required in the plan for Riverside Park
South, which shares the former rail yard with Trump Place and is being bu
ilt
in phases corresponding with the construction of the Trump towers. The fi
rst
segment, including the renovated Pier I, opened in April. The second phas
e
is being triggered by the construction of 140 and 220 Riverside Boulevard
=2E
The park is financed by the developers, a partnership of Mr. Trump and He
nry
Cheng, David Chiu, Vincent Lo, Charles Yeung and Edward Wong of China. On
completion, each segment is to be turned over to New York City.
The original plan called for stabilization of the 69th Street bridge as a
n
artifact and visual amenity, not unlike the Long Island Rail Road float
bridges at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City, Queens.
Then a few months ago, Mr. Bradley got to thinking.
"Here you have all these people," he said as he stood near the bridge, ar
ms
open to encompass Trump Place and Lincoln Towers. "And everyone of them
complains about the 72nd Street subway station."
As a vice president of the Hudson River Park Trust, which is developing t
he
waterfront south of 59th Street, Mr. Bradley oversaw the restoration of a
wooden float bridge that once served a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad freight
yard at 26th Street. That project is nearing completion.
Quickly =97 too quickly, critics have said, for a meaningful study of
financing, practicality, demand or environmental impact =97 Mr. Bradley d
rew
up a $2.7 million plan for a ferry landing at 69th Street.
This would involve renovating the housing from which the decks are
suspended, repairing the pilings, cross-bracing the bridge girders, addin
g
timber planking, attaching the spud barge and even replacing the missing
train tracks, Mr. Bradley said, "so you would understand what this thing
did."
The remnants of two other float bridges immediately to the south would be
cleared away, though the bridge trusses may be kept in place. The most
monumental ruin of the rail yard is the shed on Pier D, transformed by fi
re
25 years ago into an undulating skeleton almost worthy of Frank Gehry. To
its south, Pier C is a tangled spaghetti-like mass of rusting steel.
Last week, the planning corporation applied for a $2 million federal gran
t
for the ferry landing project. It would be managed by the city's
Transportation Department, which is excited about the potential, said Tom
Cocola, a spokesman. The developers had budgeted $250,000 for stabilizati
on
and $450,000 would be needed to redesign the park to accommodate the
landing.
"It's terrific," Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern said of the new plan.
"They're obligated to stabilize it. But making it functional would be eve
n
better."
The application was supported narrowly at Community Board 7 on the Upper
West Side. Ethel Sheffer, chairwoman of the board's Riverside South task
force, said she personally found the idea appealing but that it needed "h
ard
study to see whether it really can work."
The Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, was more enthusiasti
c.
"Adaptive re-use of this magnificent transfer bridge," she said, "will
enable residents and visitors to reconnect to New York City's industrial
history."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

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