Wear and tear from a rough winter caused chunks of concrete and sheet metal to fall onto the Trans-Manhattan Expressway in two frightening episodes earlier this month, the head of the Port Authority said Thursday.
Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia said water and salt leaked into the joints of a decked area above the roadway leading up to the George Washington Bridge. She said some of the infrastructure deteriorated after months of freezing and thawing as the city emerged from its coldest winter in more than a decade.
Two large pieces of debris plummeted from the bridge’s approach on May 7 and May 13. Garcia said the debris that fell from the roadway’s ceiling on May 7 in a caught-on-camera episode was a piece of metal. Port Authority officials previously said it appeared to “consist primarily of dust and light material.”
Garcia said concrete fell from the ceiling on May 13 and landed on a car. The driver in that incident was hospitalized with injuries.
A Port Authority spokesperson at the time said the two incidents were not related and happened on different areas of the road.
But Garcia told reporters Thursday that he Port Authority now determined both debris falls were caused by water and road salt seeping in through expansion joints — tooth-like seams that allow the bridge and deck to expand and contract in the heat and cold.
“This winter we had extended periods of extremely cold temperatures and significant snowfall,” Garcia said. That freeze-thaw cycle contributed to “further corroding of some of the concrete.”
Garcia said the area was inspected last year, but investigators “did not identify an immediate health and safety problem.”
Crews have now tested the concrete around other expansion joints and jackhammered away other weak spots, Garcia said. The Port Authority has also installed wire netting above the roadway to catch any future debris.
“This is not, like, fishnet,” Garcia said. “This is construction netting, so that if anything were to fall, it would be caught.”
Wire and mesh netting is a frequent Band-Aid for New York’s aging and crumbling infrastructure. The MTA spent $325 million on nets in 2019 to protect subway riders from debris falling from elevated tracks. In 2020, a metal basket meant to catch raining subway chunks fell and hit a pedestrian in Brooklyn.
The Port Authority has since 2015 undertaken a $2 billion rehabilitation of the George Washington Bridge called “Restoring the George.” Garcia said the Port Authority will replace the approach overpasses during the next phase of the capital plan.
