Engineering Inc - July/August 2018 - 42

PROJECT: CP RAIL BRIDGES OVER
NOTT STREET AND JAY STREET
SCHENECTADY, NEW YORK
FIRM: CREIGHTON MANNING
ENGINEERING
ALBANY, NEW YORK

arefully coordinating the planning
and construction of a railroad
bridge replacement over a busy
street in downtown Schenectady,
New York, turned a potential nightmare
into a win-win situation for all involved.
In a multipart arrangement, Canadian
Pacific (CP) agreed to replace its aging
60-foot two-span bridge over Nott Street
with a single span bridge nearly twice
as long. The increased clearance would
enable the city to upgrade and enlarge a
roundabout east of the underpass, providing a gateway to a casino and resort at
Mohawk Harbor. In exchange, the city
agreed to close the Jay Street and Pine

The new Nott
Street Bridge
provides twice the
clearance space
of the old span,
which facilitated
adding lanes and
upgrading a nearby
roundabout.

Street underpasses, allowing CP to eliminate those bridges altogether.
Mohawk Harbor, a $500 million commercial and residential redevelopment
project that includes the Rivers Casino
& Resort, is transforming one of the
oldest brownfield sites in the country
into a mixed-use development along the
Mohawk River. The 60-acre site was a
manufacturing plant from the early 1900s
through the 1960s. Remediation and redevelopment of the brownfield site has been
widely cited as a key part of Schenectady's
revitalization efforts.
Replacing the Nott Street bridge posed
a significant challenge because of the heavy
rail traffic on the CP line-more than a
dozen Amtrak and freight trains daily.
"Despite the complexity of the project,
we replaced this bridge with a new bridge
without ever interrupting rail traffic," says
Charles Tutunjian, project manager for
Creighton Manning Engineering.
To overcome the significant site constraints and accelerated schedule, Creighton Manning worked
closely with contractor
ING Civil, Inc., to develop
an innovative construc-

tion method that allowed dismantling the
existing Nott Street bridge while simultaneously constructing the new bridge in
the same location. This minimized project
cost, the impact to railroad operations and
the amount of time the traveling public
would have to use a detour.
"To facilitate construction, the city of
Schenectady agreed to a three-week closure
of Nott Street, which is a busy road and
that leads to a hospital," says Tutunjian.
"We designed our replacement and construction sequencing based on that threeweek closure window."
During the closure, a trestle-like support
underneath the bridge enabled the contractor to remove pieces of the old bridge
and replace them with new pieces while
maintaining rail traffic. In addition, work
was scheduled within the six-hour blocks
of downtime provided throughout the
project by CP.
Once the Nott Street bridge replacement was completed, the Jay Street underpass-which was part of the detour-was
closed and the embankment
filled in. The Pine Street
bridge closure was also
completed in early 2018.

Charles Tutunjian

CREIGHTON MANNING ENGINEERING

Bridge to
Development

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