Aging rail bridges get attention

Dangling 100 feet in the air, Frank Russo rapped his hammer on a rusty rivet on the 112-year-old Crum Creek Bridge near Swarthmore. He liked the sound.

"Hear that? That's a good, sharp ring," said Russo, a civil engineer hired by SEPTA to help inspect the bridge. "If it was more of a thud, that could mean the rivet was broken."

He used his hammer to sweep dead leaves off a girder, sending them spiraling into the valley below, and scraped at the girder joint. Then he jotted a few quick notes.

"Span 15. East end. Girder 2. North face. Paint in good condition. Moderate debris accumulation. Connections tight. No section loss."

"Steel fails mainly through deterioration," Russo said, shifting his hydraulic bucket to another girder. "Here, you don't see that. The air movement up here helps keep it dry."

The 925-foot-long Crum Creek Bridge is one of 32 SEPTA bridges rated in "poor" condition, and Russo, of HNTB Corp., was helping conduct the bridge's annual inspection, looking for danger signs.

As the Philadelphia region focuses on highway bridges after the deadly collapse of a Minnesota span last month, hundreds of thousands of people travel daily in Pennsylvania and New Jersey on rail bridges that are often older and sometimes rated in worse condition than the Minnesota bridge.

Of NJ Transit's 538 rail bridges, 127, or 24 percent, are in poor condition, according to the agency. Of the 285 Regional Rail bridges maintained by SEPTA, 32, or 11 percent, are in poor condition, SEPTA officials say. PATCO uses 30 bridges, including the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, to carry its 14-mile commuter rail line; none is in poor condition.

SEPTA also uses 323 Amtrak-maintained bridges, 89 of which are scheduled for repair or improvement, according to Amtrak. And a dozen bridges used by SEPTA are maintained by Conrail, the freight railroad. Amtrak and Conrail decline to make public the condition ratings of their bridges.

In SEPTA's suburban transit division, two bridges (one on the Norristown High-Speed Line and one on Media Route 101) are rated "poor."

While poor condition is defined as "advanced section loss, deterioration, spalling or scour," all the rail bridges remain safe for travel, the agencies say. Built for heavier trains than they now carry, the bridges are inspected regularly, and the agencies have replaced many of the most-deteriorated spans.

" 'Poor' is not the end of the world," said Jeffrey D. Knueppel, SEPTA's chief engineer and assistant general manager. "There's a significant amount of cushion for most of these. But if we continue to hold a bridge in poor condition, eventually we'll have to replace it."

Nationwide, there are about 100,000 rail bridges, according to the Federal Railroad Administration, and only the owners know what condition most are in.

The responsibility for railroad-bridge safety rests with the railroads. The Federal Railroad Administration monitors the inspection programs of bridge owners, but no federal safety regulations apply to the structure of railroad bridges.

Many of the region's rail bridges were built in the 1930s or earlier; some are more than a century old. One example: The oldest bridge linking Philadelphia and New Jersey is the Delair rail bridge, which crosses the Delaware River just south of the Betsy Ross Bridge. The Delair bridge, owned by Conrail, was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1896 and still carries freight trains as well as the Atlantic City passenger trains of NJ Transit.

The aging of the nation's bridges "will require major commitments from the railroads to increase their levels of bridge inspection and maintenance," Clifford Eby, deputy administrator of the railroad administration, told a congressional subcommittee last month.

Eby said his agency was increasing its safety focus on bridges. "The primary objective," he said, "is to minimize or eliminate the possibility of bridge-failure accidents."

There hasn't been a fatal rail-bridge collapse since the 1950s, although aging rail bridges still fall down. In May, six people were injured when an Alabama bridge collapsed beneath a freight train carrying segments of a solid rocket booster for the space shuttle.

In June, the Federal Railroad Administration created a Railroad Bridge Roundtable to examine long-range safety and determine whether the industry can come up with the money to maintain and replace old bridges.

In the Philadelphia region, SEPTA has spent much of the last 24 years repairing and replacing old bridges inherited from the defunct Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads.

"We got our wake-up call with the Columbia Avenue station," Knueppel said. "We know you've got to keep up with your infrastructure."

The Columbia Avenue bridge, a 73-year-old span that carried trains from six Regional Rail lines, was suddenly closed in 1984 when inspectors found it so corroded they feared it was on the brink of collapse. The closure, coming just five days after the $330-million Center City Commuter Tunnel united SEPTA's rail network, caused havoc for passengers.

A new $3 million bridge was erected in 30 days, but SEPTA found itself struggling to identify and repair similarly deteriorated spans.

Since 1990, SEPTA has replaced 51 bridges and repaired 49 others. The agency spent about $285 million on its bridges as part of the "Railworks" program.

The remaining 32 Regional Rail bridges rated in poor condition are the next candidates, though it can take five years from the time a bridge is scheduled for replacement until a new one is in place.

The rail lines with the most "poor" bridges are the Chestnut Hill lines: The R7 Chestnut Hill East line has eight, and the R8 Chestnut Hill West has six.

Fixing all the "poor" bridges would cost about $150 million, Knueppel said.

Locomotive engineers who operate SEPTA trains say the agency is doing a good job on bridge maintenance.

"My assessment of the condition and safety of the bridges on SEPTA's railroad is good," said Richard Dixon, general chairman of Division 71 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. "SEPTA performed major reconstruction to its mainline tracks from the Center City Commuter Tunnel to Wayne Junction in the early '90s . . . [which] involved the complete rebuilding of all bridges, track and overhead catenary wire."

Tom Dorricott, another union official and a frequent critic of SEPTA management, agreed: "Although SEPTA has many operational problems, and our rolling stock is breaking down due to age, SEPTA's bridge program is sound and effective.

"Unlike freight railroads, where millions of dollars in profits can be lost due to rerouting of freight, SEPTA has no 'profit first' concerns when it comes to potentially unsafe bridges. . . . There is no compelling economic reason for SEPTA to risk operations over a questionable bridge."

The Crum Creek bridge is rated poor, Knueppel said, because of corrosion and weld cracks. Freight trains that use the bridge are banned from one of the two sets of tracks and are limited to 10 m.p.h. SEPTA speed is not restricted.

"There's not a wild rush to do anything here, but there should be some thought to making it a capital expenditure in the future," Knueppel said.

Russo, after two days under the bridge with chief SEPTA inspector Jim Sweeney, said it was in relatively good shape. "There's no evidence of pack rust or significant section loss. What we've found is minor stuff."

Sweeney was more sanguine. He climbed from the hydraulic bucket, tossed down his hammer, and announced his verdict: "One hundred and twelve years old and good to go."

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