BAYONNE -- The newly elevated Bayonne Bridge opened to drivers early Monday morning, but the project's full completion is far from finished.
Monday marked the first day drivers made their way across the new Bayonne Bridge, the new roadbed being 215 feet above the Kill van Kill and 64 feet above the original bridge deck, according to Neal Buccino, public information officer with the Port Authority.
The new roadway currently has one lane open in each direction. It should reach its full width -- four 12-foot lanes (two in each direction), inner and outer shoulders, a median barrier and a 10-foot shared-use path for cyclists and pedestrians -- by 2019, according to Buccino.
The "Raise the Roadway" project is being done to enable supersized container ships that use the expanded Panama and Suez canals to pass underneath and reach local ports. These "neo Panamax'' ships are expected to start arriving in the area by the end of this year.
The new bridge is also the Port Authority's first all-cashless tolling facility, Buccino said.
On Sunday, Staten Island-bound drivers using the lower roadway went through a traditional toll plaza. At 5 a.m. Monday, that changed. Once drivers get to the New York side, they now pass under an overhead gantry mounted with electronic toll collection equipment. They don't stop or slow down.
More than 90 percent of Bayonne Bridge drivers already use EZPass, according to Buccino. For the drivers who don't have EZPass, an overhead camera photographs the license plate and a toll bill will be mailed to the vehicle's registered owner.
The new deck's construction has been unique in that it was built while the old bridge was still in service -- "like performing heart surgery while the patient runs a marathon" reads a "Raise the Roadway" fact sheet provided to The Jersey Journal.
"The project represents a unique engineering achievement, during which the new roadway was built while the existing roadway remained in service with limited disruption to traffic," Buccino said.
The project began in 2013 and is expected to be finished by mid-2019.
Before the project began, there was debate over whether to "raise the roadway" to accommodate the larger ships or "raze'' the historic structure altogether and build a new bridge. The "raise'' camp won.
The bridge, a national historic civil engineering landmark, was the longest steel arch bridge when it opened on Nov. 15, 1931. It was designed by master bridge builder Othmar Ammann.
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