The MTA had to reroute buses on the fly late Wednesday after the city Transportation Department determined the rides are too overweight for a century-old bridge that links Brooklyn and Queens over Newtown Creek.
Buses, which weigh between 21 and 34 tons, had to be redirected away from the city-owned Grand Street Bridge — which has a new 13-ton weight limit — at the request of the city transportation agency, MTA officials confirmed.
“New Yorkers’ safety is our top priority,” Vincent Barone, a DOT spokesperson, said in a statement. “During a regular inspection of the Grand Street Bridge, NYC DOT identified the need for urgent repairs and implemented a temporary, 13-ton weight limit on the span, which will be lifted once urgent repairs are completed.”
The 120-year-old swing bridge, which links industrial sections of Maspeth, Queens and East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been placed temporarily off-limits to MTA buses from a neighboring depot while the DOT prepares for a full closure this weekend to do the latest round of repairs to the structure.
The agency will determine whether additional work is needed on the steel through-truss bridge, or whether the 13-ton limit can be lifted on the span that is near the Grand Avenue Bus Depot and Central Maintenance Facility in Maspeth.
“Until [Wednesday night] they were giving us permission to go over the bridge,” Richard Davey, president of New York City Transit, told THE CITY. “When they said we couldn’t, we stopped.”
Keep on Truckin’
But signs near the two-lane bridge announcing the 13-ton limit did little to deter multiple 18-wheelers and even some MTA buses from rolling across the span and past DOT crews early Thursday.
One truck driver who pulled a 35-ton haul across the bridge said the 13-ton weight limit came as news to him after he had pulled into the parking lot of a nearby supermarket.
“Weight limits, heights, none of this seems to be accurate,” a long-haul driver, who asked that his name not be used, told THE CITY after crossing the span. “You’re not supposed to go over the bridge, but sometimes it’s the easiest way.”
‘It Inconveniences All the Routes”
Officials with Transport Workers Union Local 100 said bus operators at the Grand Avenue Depot had flagged the new weight-limit signs in recent days.
“It happened almost overnight,” said Clarence Patterson, the union chair at the depot, which houses routes that serve Brooklyn and Queens. “They just put up the sign.”
“It doesn’t inconvenience one route, it inconveniences all the routes,” said Larnel Boggs, a bus operator for 15 years. “You can’t use the bridge, so everyone has to go to one location to pull out and get to their first stop.”
DOT said the suggested detour for buses and trucks that weigh more than 13 tons is to take the nearby Metropolitan Avenue Bridge, another Brooklyn-Queens link over English Kills, a tributary of Newton Creek.
Davey said the detour will impact weekday service at “a couple of bus stops” as a result of the latest bridge repairs.
“We’ve been there, done that on this detour,” he said. “We feel confident it will be pulled off without a hitch.”
JP Patafio, a TWU Local 100 vice president, said trucks and buses that tip the scales at well over 13 tons have long gone over the bridge “every minute of every day.”
“You do not want to jeopardize the life of the passengers or the operators at all,” Patafio said. “And according to those signs, it’s a serious safety issue.”