From The Farm Studio: A bridge gone berserk
August 8, 2008
by Tom Curley AIA LEEDS
Everybody wants to be an architect, but nobody wants to listen to one. But I was warned. Professor Chylinski said so the first day of third year design studio (the day I noticed the freshman class of 100 was now a junior class of 25, real soon to become the senior class of a dozen). “Anybody who really wants to be in a position to affect the environment should leave this architecture building, walk down to the main quad, take a left turn and behold the college of engineering. Enroll there.” Of course, none of us did.
Chappaqua is building the gateway into our hamlet, a new bridge over the railroad, and the engineers are in charge. And it seems they’re messing it up big time. Maybe it’s not really all their fault because they are doing what they are trained to do: designing the new bridge to make sure it doesn’t fall down, clearly a good thing. But some public works, especially those in the heart of our village, need to be addressed as civic architecture. And in this case, the challenge is not only how the bridge looks, but in our hamlet much more importantly how big it is. In design terms, this is known as “scale.”
The scale of the new bridge is brutal. It’s much too wide for our little hamlet. So that you know how wide it is going to be, and you really should do this, take a short drive up Route 100 towards Muscoot Farm. When you come to the bridge that crosses the reservoir, pull over. You’ve been there before, but this time get out of your car and take a look. Chappaqua’s new bridge is going to be even wider than that. Now imagine that bridge in the center of our hamlet. And imagine the trees there gone as well, because they will have to go.
Why we don’t need a three-lane bridge
The berserk part is that none of this is necessary. Here’s a little bit of background. We now have a two-lane forty-foot wide bridge which the state has not taken care of and now needs replacement. Reasonably, the town board has requested that two-way traffic and a walkway be maintained at all times during the construction of the new bridge.
The highway engineers’ response has been to design a permanent three-lane sixty-foot wide bridge. This all has to do with construction phasing, scheduling, and to a great extent working over the railroad. Pretty complicated stuff alright. But, according to the engineers, this extra lane isn’t really needed after construction. So, as a permanent solution to a temporary construction problem, right near our delightful train station we will have a very wide highway bridge that ruins our gateway. Berserk. Meanwhile, without addressing the impacts of scale and tree loss, the state engineers recently promised that Chappaqua was going to get “an award-winning bridge.” Right, they get the award and we get the bridge. There must be a better way.
And I think there is. I was on the design team for track and station improvements on the northeast corridor which included the renovation of fifteen major Amtrak stations between Washington, D.C., and Boston. I also was the chief architect for a new thirteen-station rapid transit line, including trackway, from downtown Singapore to its international airport. So I have a little grey around the temples on this stuff.
Borrowing ideas from creative railroad engineers
I think maybe we should be borrowing ideas from the railroad engineers. Anyone who has suffered through the reconstruction of a Metro North station is familiar with the temporary overhead walkways they ask us to use while they build the new station. These are made from what are called prefabricated trusses, and they are brought on site by rail and lifted into place overnight.
The military long ago developed an equivalent for vehicles; it’s called a Bailey bridge. This technology is quite common and there are even commercial vendors of them. With a Metro North walkway and a Bailey bridge in place, reconstruction of a our two-lane 40 foot bridge can move along without the encumbrances of traffic and phasing. The tricky part would be making the transitions from the roadway to the temporary Bailey bridge and back again. But that can be done. The overall construction period would probably be quicker in the end with fewer trees removed, and we would have our 40 foot bridge back.
That’s just one way to skin this cat. Creative engineers—I have had the great joy of working with many of that kind—approach problems with all of the tools available to them, which are prodigious, without being profligate. Get the right minds together (creative engineers) with the right priorities (the client, in this case town board) and surely this can be done.
I understand that the town board has tried to get a narrower bridge from the state department of transportation. The state has said that temporary bridge solutions are technically feasible, but to build one and then remove it, they maintain, is more expensive than leaving it in place, placing that approach beyond their budget for this project.
Well, here are three observations I think we might consider. First, 80% of the money for the bridge renovation is coming from the federal government. Second, it may be fine for the state to say we are not worth spending the extra money on our bridge, but they don’t live here. Finally, our town board should be able to intercede in Albany on behalf of our interests to direct the state engineers to give us the bridge which the town board, representing us, wants.
Back to the architects
Architect and resident Chuck Napoli has made a two-year study of the issues surrounding the bridge, and can show to anyone willing to listen that the bridge can be rebuilt to its current width. (In fact, the Bailey bridge idea is his). Chuck has been a friend to our town for over thirty years, and his presentation is lucid and thorough. From New Castle to Albany it seems he has pressed every avenue to be heard, including the New York State Department of Transportation. But the three-lane bridge goes back several town board administrations and is vested in long-term state/town relationships and he’s not getting much traction. So under the theory that “…you never know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone,” Chuck has taken to putting ribbons around the trees that will be cut down in the hope that we all will take notice and start to ask the tough questions in a tough way. But someone in town keeps taking the ribbons off.
It’s really a shame. Construction starts in September and the trees have already been marked to go. When we all get back from our summer vacations to our lovely town it will be a little less so. Maybe a lot less so: I don’t think Chuck would disagree with me that the reconstruction of our bridge will be to our little hamlet what the “reconstruction” of Penn Station was to Manhattan.
But then, we’re just the architects.
Thomas Curley projects can be found on six continents for clients as diverse as the Walt Disney Company, The Guggenheim Museum, The City of New York, The United States Air Force Academy, The National Capital Planning Commission, the City of Washington, D.C., the New Jersey Nets, and The Smithsonian Institution among many others.
Mr. Curley has designed new towns in the Philippines, China, Australia, and India, and he provided a finalist submission for the 2008 Olympic Village in Beijing. He was the chief architect and urban designer for 15 rapid transit stations in Singapore. He was the lead designer for the EuroDisney master plan in Paris, and he provided strategic planning for 9,000 acres of Disney property south of the Disney World Resort in Florida. Mr. Curley provided the master plan for the reconstruction of downtown Beirut, for which he won an international design award for excellence from the Congress for New Urbanism.
At the national level, he was one of the authors of the Washington Legacy Plan for the National Capital Planning Commission, and just completed a 25-year master plan for Congress for Capitol Hill. In New York, he was the master planner for a new community of 1,600 units and half a million square feet of commercial development for the city of New York on one of the city’s last large land holdings. Mr. Curley believes that to be called to service on public projects is the highest honor an architect can achieve.
At the local level, Mr. Curley served on the New Castle Planning Board for 10 years.
Thomas Curley graduated from the Southern California Institute for Architecture (SCI-Arc) with graduate degrees in Architecture and Urban Design. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and is a LEED accredited professional.
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