More than 70 years old and carrying heavy traffic flows, the Hugh L. Carey and Queens Midtown tunnels are two of New York city’s vital transport links. Additionally, the Hugh L. Carey (formerly the Brooklyn- Battery) tunnel held the record for the longest continuous service of any underwater vehicular tunnel in North America.
Taken together, the road tunnels were due for Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) – operating at MTA Bridge and Tunnels – to undertake refurbishment works and to upgrade of the safety systems of the tunnels. Five design-build contracts worth US$123 million were procured for the upgrade works, which followed a few years after restoration and resilience improvements after the flooding caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
That the major refurbishment and improvement works took place over the covid pandemic lockdowns, and that the tunnels running under the East River remained open throughout, and in service, is testament to the determined efforts and engineering achievements of all involved.
The Owner’s Engineer was a joint venture of COWI and CHA Consulting, Inc. The JV provided oversight and coordination of new ventilation and fire safety systems, including advanced smoke detection and communication systems, and said the upgrades were completed on budget and to time without closing the tunnels to traffic.
The project has a water mist fire suppression system prototype within the Hugh L. Carey tunnel, the first of its kind to be installed in North America. The existing fire suppression system relied on the Fire Department of New York response, which could be impacted by traffic disruptions associated with a fire in the tunnel.
Steven Kramer, senior vice president and project director for the project at COWI, said in a statement: “This project was very close to home for our engineers, most of us have used these tunnels and know how vital they are to the ecosystem of New York. Working on such a deep-rooted part of our transport network can be challenging but our proactivity and collaboration with construction partners provided a design-build model that offered significant cost and schedule reductions.”
Lee Ecker, senior vice president at CHA and its highway & rail business practice leader, said in a statement: “Safe and reliable infrastructure is essential to New York City.” He added “This was a complex project and the team involved was top notch.”
In its 2020-2024 capital programme, issued in 2019, MTA Bridge and Tunnels listed the total budgets for the ventilation/service buildings and the water mist/ fire suppression systems of Queens Midway and Hugh L. Carey tunnels as US46 million and US$53 million, respectively.
Over 2020-24, as listed on its Capital programme Amendment No2 (published July 2022), the total spending on rehabilitation of ventilation/service buildings for Hugh L. Carey and Queens Midtown tunnels were listed with budgets of US$25.7 million and US$31.3 million (US$25.7 million in 2019 budget), respectively. For improvements to their fire suppression system the listed total budgets over the period were US$3.1 million each.
Additionally, budgets listed for improvements to the Manhattan portal and rehabilitation of the pipe gallery of Hugh L. Carey tunnel were US$20.6 million and US$10.4 million, respectively.
At Queens Midtown tunnel, the rehabilitation of the tunnel and the pipe gallery were listed with budgets of US$3.8 million and US$13.7 million, respectively.
In addition to the two road tunnels, the budget listings for MTA Bridge and Tunnels also covers some bridges in New York (Verrazzano-Narrows, RFK, Throgs Neck, Henry Hudson, Marine Parkway, Cross Bay and Bronx- Whitestone).
