NewportBridge

Claiborne Pell
Newport Bridge

Length: 1,600 feet (main span), 11,248 feet (total length)
Construction: 1966-1969, Opened: June 28, 1969
Car Toll: $2.00 both direction or $10.00 for ten tokens

Since colonial days the Narragansett Bay was a obstacle to continuous travel. A trip to the other side of Narragansett Bay meant either a long ferry ride or a long land trip through the crowded streets of Providence.

Beginning in 1934, the state of Rhode Island sought Federal aid to build bridges over the West and East Passage of Narragansett Bay. The bridge over the West Passage, called the Jamestown Bridge was opened to traffic in 1940. Later, the studies began on the bridge over the East Passage, but were delayed by World War II.

Planning resumed in 1944, but only four years later, on April 1948 the Jamestown-Newport Bridge proposal was approved. Then, at least 32 studies were made for a suspension bridge, cantilever bridge, tunnel or a combination bridge-tunnel between Jamestown and Newport.

In 1954, the State Legislature created the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority (RITBA). In addition to financing, building and maintaining the proposed East Passage crossing, the new authority took over jurisdiction of the Mount Hope Bridge.

Late 1950's the Rhode Island Department of Public Works (RIDPW) unveiled plans for a statewide expressway network. The new network included the East Passage crossing and In 1960, the RITBA commissioned the engineering firm of Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade and Douglas to design the Newport Bridge.

In 1960 the Rhode Island voters rejected statewide referendum that would have given the RITBA the ability to sell bonds for the Newport Bridge. A second referendum in 1964 was successful, and re-ratified in special June1965 referendum. By the Daily News, 5,994 Newport voters agreed with building and 225 Newporters said no. Statewide, voters endorsed the bridge referendum 30,739 to 10,595.

By the end of 1965, the RITBA received final approval from the Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy and the bridge construction on April 5, 1966. It took years to persuade the military to allow a bridge with the height for accommodating aircraft carriers to be built, and then within five years the Navy pulled most of its fleet out of Rhode Island.

Creating the foundations for the tower piers and anchorages was a difficult task. Over 800 steel piles had to be driven down to bedrock as much as 162 feet below the water level.

Once the steel piles were set, prefabricated forms arrived by barge. The largest of these forms weighed 420 tons and was ten stories high.

Two powerful storms wreaked havoc with the forms and engineers had to straighten the forms before concrete could be poured for the two tower piers and the 52 other piers. The 90,000 cubic yards of concrete in the piers and anchorages were poured by the "tremie" method.

During the summer and fall of 1967, workers erected the two 400-foot-tall steel towers of the bridge. The streamlined towers and arched portals are reminiscent of those found on bridges designed by Othmar Ammann such as the Verrazano-Narrows, Bronx-Whitestone, Walt Whitman and Delaware Memorial bridges.

Two main suspension cables were created by spinning each strand wire by wire, from anchorage to tower, tower to tower and tower to anchorage.

For the Newport span, Bethlehem Steel developed a new construction method that used prefabricated parallel wire strands. The two main cables, each of which measured 15¹/₁₆ inches in diameter, were coated with a glass fiber-plastic protective casing. Each of the bridge's main cables had 76 strands, and each strand had 61 wires (each 0.2 inch in diameter and measuring 4,516 feet long). Laid end to end, the wires would stretch for more than 8,000 miles. The cables weighed a total of 2,280 tons.

By late 1968, workers began work on hoisting the roadway into place. Floating cranes hoisted the conventional steel truss sections on the main suspension span from Narragansett Bay. The distance between towers is 1,600 feet, and at center span, the roadway provides a 206-foot vertical clearance for ocean-bound vessels. On either side of the main suspension bridge, there are 11 deck-truss spans measuring a total of 3,450 feet; 15 girder spans measuring a total of 2,524 feet; 300 feet of multi-girder spans and 2,000 feet of pre-stressed concrete beam spans. The concrete deck is seven and one-half inches deep. Approximately 17,500 cubic yards of concrete were used to build the roadway deck.

At the peak, there were 300 people working on the bridge. Divers did much of the underwater work and were earning good money for the time, up to $1,500 a week. There were 1,286 piles and many had to be cut for footings. The divers were averaging one pile cut a day, all in 35 degrees at the bottom of the bay, where the water pressure was about 10,000 pounds per square foot. One diver with 15 years of experience drowned 1600 feet below the surface when his air hose was cut in September 1966. Later, with introducing of saturation tank, the team could cut off 15 piles a day by using the new system.

The $55 million Newport Bridge opened to traffic on June 28, 1969 with a ceremony at the Jamestown toll plaza, which also houses the headquarters for the RITBA. The bridge won awards for excellence in engineering design from the New York Association of Consulting Engineers, the Consulting Engineers Council, the American Iron and Steel Institute, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 1970 the National Society of Professional Engineers selected the bridge as one of the outstanding engineering achievements of 1969. Other honored projects for that year were Apollo moon landing and the building of the Boeing 747.

With larger traffic came tourists, traffic jams Newport's T-shirt economy, the growth of Aquidneck Island industrial parks, it helped the Preservation Society and contributed to the growth of local economy. On another hand four Jamestown businesses with lost of about 70 jobs were closed, all which depended on ferry traffic. It took over five years for the Jamestown economy to recover.

In February 1981, a tanker loaded with 50,000 barrels of oil made a direct hit on one of the main piers of the bridge. The only damage sustained to the bridge was a smear of gray paint from the tanker, a testimony to the strength of the bridge. Meanwhile, the impact crushed the bow of the tanker inward by ten feet.

According to the RIDOT, approximately 27,000 vehicles use the bridge each day.

In 1997, Rhode Island State Legislature dedicated the Newport Bridge in honor of six-term U.S. Senator Clairborne Pell upon his retirement.

Type of bridge: Suspension
Construction started: April 5, 1966
Opened to traffic: June 28, 1969
Length of main span: 1,600 feet - longest suspension bridge in New England and the 14th largest of its kind in the US.
Length of side spans: 687 feet, 9 inches
Length, anchorage to anchorage: 2,975 feet, 6 inches
Total length of bridge and approaches: 11,248 feet, 2 inches
Width of bridge: 48 feet
Number of traffic lanes: 4 lanes
Height of towers above mean high water: 400 feet
Clearance at center above mean high water: 206 feet
Steel used in suspended structure: 23,280 tons
Reinforcing steel used: 4,000 tons
Number of cables: 2 cables
Diameter of each of two cables: 15¹/₁₆ inches
Total number of wires per cable: 4,636 wires
Total length of wires: 8,000 miles
Concrete used in substructure: 136,000 cubic yards
Concrete used in roadway and approaches: 17,500 cubic yards
Cost of original structure: $54,742,000

Claiborne Pell / Newport Bridge Links:
Claiborne Pell (Newport) Bridge
(Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority)

Bibliography