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The 65th. Street rail yard. photo: Jim Henderson
The 65th. Street rail yard was once an active freight depot, with rail cars being barged across the harbor from NJ and on to tracks that traveled through Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island.
In the first half of the 20th century, the 65th Street rail yard was a major link in the city’s rail freight network. From the 1920s – 1950s, its four car float bridges handled in excess of 1000 rail cars/day but as freight traffic declined, the yard was abandoned and the car float bridges were removed in the early 1970s.
Now, the city has reopened the long-shuttered rail yard in Bay Ridge, restoring a once vital marine-to-rail link. Millions of dollars have been spent improving and expanding the freight rail infrastructure along the south Brooklyn waterfront including laying new track and renovating the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.
From NYCEDC:
From The New York Times: “There needs to be another way to handle the increasing capacity, other than roadways,” said Lisa Daglian, a spokeswoman for the New York council, citing growing population and consumer demand for products in the region. Bruce Lieberman, chairman of the New York and Atlantic Railway, said his business has steadily attracted new customers, climbing to more than 22,000 carloads annually.
Tug and car float. photo: Robert Simko/The Broadsheet
From The New York Times: According to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a regional organization charged with transportation planning, just 1 percent of the 434.7 million tons of freight transported through the city and its suburbs in 2004, the latest year analyzed, was by rail, compared with 89 percent by truck. The council estimates that by 2030, the total amount of freight will nearly double, rising to 804.4 million, though some transportation experts have suggested that number may be too high.
by Mai Armstrong for Working Harbor Committee
Robots, once a figment of our imagination, have started to become ubiquitous in our everyday lives. We are used to talking cell phones and driverless trains. But what about pollution-fighting fish robots?
Dr. Huosheng Hu with an early prototype. photo: MotherboardTV
The Shoal Consortium, a group of scientists from University of Essex, the Tyndall National Institute, the University of Strathclyde together with BMT Group, a technology consultancy, and Thales Safare, a unit of Europe’s largest defense electronics group and the Port Authority of Gijon have developed a robotic fish that can detect and report pollution from the source, in real-time.
Luke Speller from the Shoal Consortium explains how it works in this video from BBC News.
Last week, a school of prototype robo-fish was released in the northern Spanish Port of Gijón in the Bay of Biscay. The school of 5-foot long mechanical fish will patrol the harbor, collecting and mapping real-time data of contaminants in the water. The robots detect heavy metals like copper, lead and phenols while operating to depths of around 95 feet. They can also measure oxygen and salinity levels to help monitor the harbor’s environmental health.
Designed to mimic nature, the robotic fish have built-in acoustic sensors so they can “talk” to each other, sonar to “see” and avoid obstacles and a computer brain that tells them where and how best to hunt down sources of pollution.
SHOAL robotic fish released into the wild. photo Luke Speller
From BBC News: Ian Dukes from the University of Essex – another partner in the consortium – says that nature was an obvious inspiration for their robot.
He explains: “Over millions of years, fish have evolved the ultimate hydrodynamic shape, and we have tried to mimic that in the robot. “They swim just like fish; they are really quite agile and can change direction quickly, even in shallow water.”
Dr. Huosheng Hu of the University of Essex in the robotics lab. photo: MotherboardTV
The dual-hinged fish-tail is very maneuverable, enabling the robo-fish to make tight turns a propeller-driven robot couldn’t manage. This makes them easily able to navigate the ports and avoid ships and the port infrastructure.
They are also less noisy, which is better for marine life. The robo-fish are battery-powered and run for about 8 hours between charges. For now, they have to be picked up by boat, but in the future, the scientists plan to program the fish to automatically return to a charging station when the battery runs low.
Watch more at MotherboardTV about the development of the robo-fish.
SHOAL robotic fish. photo Luke Speller
Currently, divers monitor water quality about once a month – a costly, time-consuming process. The port of Gijón pays 100,000 euro a year for divers to collect water samples which are then sent away for analysis for several weeks. The SHOAL robo-fish monitor the water quality in real-time allowing the port authorities to respond immediately to pollution and start mitigating the effects.
“The idea is that we want to have real-time monitoring of pollution, so that if someone is dumping chemicals or something is leaking, we can get to it straight away, find out what is causing the problem and put a stop to it,” explains Luke Speller to the BBC.
While the primary purpose for the robo-fish is to monitor water pollution, that’s not all the scientists and engineers have planned. The modular design makes it easily adaptable for other uses. The developers hope to refine the robo-fish technology for oil-spill cleanup, maritime search and rescue, and port security.
by Mai Armstrong for Working Harbor Committee
The Kosciuszko Bridge at sunset. credit: Mitch Waxman
The Kosciuszko Bridge replacement project will begin in the Spring of 2013 – a year early – thanks to a $460 million boost made available by Governor Cuomo’s New York Works initiative. New York Works is a sort of infrastructure bank that draws on combined government and private funds in order to expedite spending on big projects.
Long slated for replacement, the Kosciuszko Bridge once topped a list of NY’s worst bridges and roads by the The General Contractors Association of New York and was fast tracked partially due to being on NY State’s “deficient bridge” list.
From Crains NY: The Kosciuszko, which links the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens across Newtown Creek; and the expressway, which connects the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, ranked No. 1 and 2, respectively, on the Top 10 list of troubled New York state-owned elevated roadways and bridges in the city in terms of their structural condition.
From the NY Daily News: The 73-year-old bridge, which carries the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway over the Newtown Creek, qualified for the money in part because it is on the state’s “deficient bridge” list.
The new cable-stayed bridge design was chosen in 2010, after analysis of environmental studies, partnering with community groups and stakeholders and open public comment sessions. Here is a video presentation from Project Visualization of the proposed design, with the new design rendered in situ from the NY Department of Transportation.
Construction of the new bridge will occur along side the existing bridge, and will have 9 lanes for vehicle traffic. The new bridge will also have pedestrian and bike access, which the existing design does not allow for, and something I am personally looking forward to.
From the NY Daily News: The initial phase of construction will build an eastbound lane next to the existing bridge, according to the state Department of Transportation, the agency overseeing the project. The 1.1-mile bridge is expected to be done in 2017 and will cost about $800 million. When completed, two new spans with a total of nine vehicle lanes and paths for pedestrians and bikes will replace the original structure.
The new Kosciuszko Bridge is scheduled to be completed in 2017. It will be a new experience to be able to walk or bike over this new bridge, vistas previously beyond our sight will be opened up with this new access.
I wonder what the view from mid-span will be 5 years from now.
by Mai Armstrong for Working Harbor Committee
Replacement of Anchorage Channel Water Siphons. Crews begin to excavate the starter trench. credit: NYDEP
New York Harbor is getting a little love, $250 million worth. This week Mayor Michael Bloomberg together with Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye, launched a $250 million infrastructure project in New York Harbor.
The mega-project will dredge the Anchorage Channel to a depth of 50 feet and replace two old subaqueous water tunnels between Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Stapleton and Tompkinsville, Staten Island with a new water transmission main – a siphon.
Staten Island Siphon Project. credit: NYCDEP
From NYCDEP: “Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye today launched a $250 million construction project to boost economic development in New York Harbor. The project involves digging a new water transmission main – called a siphon – between Staten Island and Brooklyn that will allow for the removal of two existing tunnels that are currently at a much shallower depth.”
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other officials on Staten Island on Wednesday next to a 110-ton tunnel-boring machine.
credit: Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
The replacement of the two outdated, more shallowly buried water mains are necessitated by the deepening of the Anchorage Channel. The new water siphon will be buried 100 feet beneath Upper New York Bay.
From The New York Times: ‘The dredging necessitated the replacement of two existing tunnels, one that dates to 1917, the other to 1925. They are 56 and 60 feet below the surface, respectively, and would be too close to the channel bottom after the dredging, officials said. The new tunnel will be 100 feet below the surface. Like the old tunnels, the new one will provide only a backup source of drinking water for Staten Island.”
Ports all along the Eastern Seaboard are working feverishly to blast, dredge, even raise bridges to prepare for the much larger Post-Panamax ships. Deepening the shipping lanes of the New York Harbor will make sure our port remains competitive, once the Panama Canal Expansion Project is completed in 2014.
From NYCDEP: “Last year saw record cargo volumes at these facilities, with 5.5 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) processed, eclipsing the 2007 record set before the economic downturn. With future cargo volumes expected to double over the next decade, the Anchorage Channel must be deepened in order to accommodate the new generation of larger cargo vessels and better position the region to benefit from growth in global trade. These new, larger next-generation ‘Post-Panamax’ vessels also bring environmental benefits by carrying more cargo in fewer ships and cleaner fuel technology.”
Watch Mayor Bloomberg and Port Authority of NY/NJ Executive Director Pat Foye at the Press Conference
From NYC.gov: “New York Harbor has been a critical part of our economy since the founding of our great city some 400 years ago,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “And if we want New York City’s economy to stay competitive, we must accommodate new mega-ships and their cargo. This investment in our infrastructure will spur economic activity all along our working waterfront.”
The Port of New York and New Jersey currently handles 40% of the North Atlantic’s shipping trade, which accounts for 279,000 local area jobs. With cargo volumes expected to double, this upgrade is an important investment in the economic future of New York harbor.
by Mai Armstrong for Working Harbor Committee
