The $100 million, multi-year rehabilitation of the Peace Bridge, which connects the U.S. and Canada in Western New York, reached completion toward the end of last month.

According to news station WFBO, work on the bridge included widening and strengthening the span, replacing the bridge deck and structural steel, new light posts and railings, and putting in new traffic control gantries.

Peace Bridge History

The Peace Bridge, connecting Buffalo, New York, with Fort Erie, Ontario, runs 3,580 feet in length from abutment to abutment, and is a deck type truss and arch bridge structure. The bridge opened in 1927.

The superstructure is composed of riveted steel with reinforced concrete deck slabs, as well as a latex modified concrete wearing surface. The 2014 inspection of the bridge revealed that the bridge was still in satisfactory to good condition.

Óðinn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The $100 million, multi-year rehabilitation of the Peace Bridge, which connects the U.S. and Canada in Western New York, reached completion toward the end of last month.

The Board of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority awarded the contract for the work to the American Bridge Canada Company. The bridge company was the lowest bidder, and had previously worked on other projects including the Walt Whitman Bridge, in Philadelphia; the Tappan Zee Hudson River Crossing Project, in New York; and the George Washington Bridge, also in New York, among others.

Rehabilitation Work

In widening the bridge’s span, workers were able to add a new bicycle and pedestrian path, as well as a new observation deck that sits near the border line. The project was self-financed.

The work extends the lifespan of the bridge by another 75 years. Most recently, the bridge was modified to a three-lane bridge with 12-foot-wide lanes; the center lane can be reversed, allowing for two-lane operation during heavy traffic times. All three lanes reopened in May.

Around the time of the lanes’ reopening, binational authority officials also authorized a $28 million painting project, which will be funded by leftover money from what was budgeted for the redecking. Painting, which is being carried out by Liberty Maintenance, of Ohio, is slated for completion in 2021. The bridge was last repainted 25 years ago.

The painting work, which went up for bid in January, requires complete coating removal and replacement of the remaining areas of the structure using abrasive blast-cleaning within SSPC Class 1A containment systems. Existing steel members are to be abrasive blast-cleaned to Near White (SSPC-SP 10) standards followed by a two-coat organic zinc-rich primer with a polysiloxane top coat.

"Many people said this project could not be done, that we could not redeck an old bridge under traffic conditions and that we would not be able to keep such an important border crossing functional during construction," said Peace Bridge Authority Vice Chairman Kenneth Manning. "I'm here today to say that they were wrong."