Newport-area bridge too low; DelDOT must correct error

• DelDOT spent more than $5 million to rebuild a bridge overpass near Newport.
• The agency discovered that the crossing hadn't been built high enough.
• It will cost about $500,000 to raise the bridge.

In 2011, the Delaware Department of Transportation spent more than $5 million to rebuild a bridge overpass near Newport to accommodate taller freight trains.

But soon after the project was completed, the agency discovered that it hadn’t been built quite high enough.

The most likely cause, said Barry Benton, Delaware Department of Transportation’s state bridge engineer, was a DelDOT surveying team that had mistakenly measured the clearance for the span from the ground rather than from the top of the tracks’ steel rails.

“It appears that the original survey shots may not have been top of the rail; they may have been bottom of the rail,” Benton said. “When we fill out a survey request, we request top of rail, and that’s what we thought we got.”

As a result, the price tag of the 4-year-old Newport Road bridge will jump by nearly half a million dollars this summer as construction crews jack up the span 6 inches to fix the previous mistake.

The error was discovered in 2012, shortly after the bridge construction was completed. Following the discovery, DelDOT requested a waiver from CSX to keep the bridge at the height of its construction. CSX officials declined the request.

STORY:I-495 Bridge jacking resumes next week

STORY:DNREC cites landowners for I-495 dirt pile

CSX Corp. owns the tracks and has been trying to switch to trains that carry two stacked containers on each car. Those trains need at least 21 feet 6 inches of clearance. When the span on Newport Road near Delcastle Technical High School was completed, it was a few inches too low, Benton said.

The DelDOT workers who surveyed the bridge site are no longer employed at the agency, Benton said. They left because of normal turnover and before agency officials learned of the mistake, he said.

Benton declined to comment whether a surveyor would be fired for committing such an error.

The 2011 bridge project came at a total cost to taxpayers of $5.017 million, more than double the amount of the construction contractor’s winning bid. When reached by phone, an official from the winning construction company, Richard E Pierson Construction, declined to comment.

There was “a lost opportunity to recognize [the error] during construction,” Benton said. The construction team might have measured the span’s height after its steel skeleton was in place, he said, failing to realize that the structure will settle a few inches after the roadway is placed upon it.

“They would have probably measured it before the deck went on. At that time they would have measured [21 feet 8 inches] because the deck had not yet been placed, and they would have thought everything was fine,” he said.

The fault, however, lies squarely with the surveyors, Benton said, and not with crews from Richard E Pierson Construction.

Benton stressed that he is speculating on the cause as DelDOT has not made a definitive determination.

Nevertheless, the result is the same – one bridge too low.

Construction crews this summer will once again descend upon the span with heavy equipment, forcing the closure of Newport Road for more than a month.

DelDOT awarded the summer contract to raise the bridge to Mumford and Miller Inc. after it sent in a winning bid of $472,000.

“It’s frustrating,” said Steve Jensen, who lives at the foot of the bridge in a house on Newport Road and Kiamensi Street. “There’s never enough time to do it right, but there’s time to do it over again.”

Though he’s disgruntled that DelDOT’s mistake will cost taxpayers money, he doesn’t mind that Newport Road will be closed for much of the summer. Although many people will see the closure of the road as an inconvenience, he’ll enjoy the quiet, he said.

“I like that it will shut down,” he said. “This is used as a drag strip sometimes.”

DelDOT officials should testify to state lawmakers and describe how and why the construction mistake occurred, said John Flaherty, spokesman for the Delaware Coalition for Open Government.

The error is one of “a series of snafus” on Delaware bridges in recent years, he said, including the complete closure of I-495 over the Christiana River in 2014 because of the failure of the bridge supports and the excessive settling of embankments on approaches to a bridge over the Indian River more than a decade ago.

The Indian River problems led to a 2011 lawsuit with DelDOT seeking nearly $20 million from contractors, Figg Bridge Engineers and MACTEC Engineering and Consulting.

DelDOT eventually settled the case for $5.25 million.

Additionally, last fall, DelDOT contractors had to repave segments of an I-95 bridge roadway one month after the project was completed. The original concrete patches did not stick, officials said at the time, because the bridge substructure is old and crumbling.

There is no correlation, however, between the I-95 problems and the mistake on Newport Road, Benton said.

“That’s not relevant at all,” Benton said. “You have to remember, all of our interstate bridge decks are over 50 years old.”

While mistakes that occur on bridges or other infrastructure can burn taxpayer dollars, they also provide value as learning experiences, said Doug Hecox, spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration.

“Incidents like this are teachable moments,” he said. They “actually serve to make the engineering community more thorough in their work.”

Still, he said, the mistake at the Newport Road bridge is extremely rare, a sentiment that Benton also stressed.

It is an anomaly, Benton said, and is one that will not happen again. A new DelDOT policy requires surveyors to take three measurement readings when judging clearances from railroad tracks, he said – one on each side of the rail, and one on top of the rail.

“We’ve worked on hundreds of bridges, and this is the only one that has happened while I’ve been here,” Benton said.

Officials at the American Society of Civil Engineers declined a request for comment about the scope of bridge engineering mistakes in the United States.

“Given the sensitive nature of this topic and the potential for putting our members in an uncomfortable position, we must decline this request,” said Olivia Wolfertz, spokeswoman for the ASCE.

CSX is requiring bridges to be raised across the country, as it shifts the way it carries freight, said Rob Doolittle, spokesman for CSX.

“The most efficient way to move [freight] is with two containers, double-stacked,” he said.

STORY: DelDOT says $13M for overpass for Overbook Town Center

STORY: DelDOT - Protect yourself from paving scams 

CSX operates trains on its 130 miles of tracks in Delaware, with links to ports and shipping centers throughout the Northeast, Doolittle said. Company trains carry approximately 750,000 carloads of freight each year in Delaware, he said.

Ed Townsend, a resident who lives near the bridge said he and other neighbors haven’t heard any information recently from DelDOT about when their main access road will close. Like Jensen, he is more concerned about the fiscal implications of the mistake rather than the direct impacts of the closure to Newport Road.

“You just go around and to the next road, and come down, it’s not a big deal.”

Nearby Delcastle Technical High School regularly uses the Newport Road bridge to shuttle students between the school and James H. Groves High School, which lies three blocks north of the bridge, said school spokeswoman Kathy Demarest. The two facilities share various programs, she said. If the project is delayed and extends beyond the day that classes resume, the school will detour students around the closures through Newport Gap Pike, she said.

It is the same detour that school officials used in 2011 during the original construction of the bridge, Demarest said.

But on Newport Gap Pike, there is a rail crossing, not a bridge over the tracks, noted Debbie Weaver, another resident who lives near the bridge. As a result, many of the drivers who use Newport Road as a way to avoid train traffic delays will be backed up on Newport Gap Pike, she said. Others might not be aware of the closure at all, she worries, and could circle through her quiet neighborhood trying to find a way across the tracks.

“People make mistakes, but it’s just unfortunate that we’re going to have to do this through the summer,” she said.

Contact Karl Baker at (302) 324-2329 or kbaker@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @kbaker6.