Webpage announced for 2025 rehabilitation project at Uhlerstown-Frenchtown Bridge

FRENCHTOWN BOROUGH, NJ (Hunterdon County) – A specific informational webpage has been established for the upcoming 2025 rehabilitation of the 93-year-old Uhlerstown-Frenchtown Toll-Supported Bridge, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission announced Monday.

The newly established webpage is www.drjtbc.org/project/frenchtownbridge.

“At this time, the webpage has limited information because project design work remains in a preliminary stage. Content is expected to be expanded and updated as open houses are conducted and preparations advance to final design in the coming months,” the commission said.

Currently, the page provides an overview along with the project goals, current schedule, and anticipated tasks to be performed once rehabilitation work begins at the bridge.  The page has additional information on the bridge, some video links, and a bibliography of published content mentioning the bridge. Some errors exist in these publications, the commission said.

The planned rehabilitation is intended to put the bridge in a good state of repair and extend its service life so it will not need a major rehabilitation for another 15 years. The bridge’s current steel superstructure opened to traffic on Oct. 10, 1931. It was last rehabilitated in 2001. The bridge links the Borough of Frenchtown in Hunterdon County with the Uhlerstown section of Tinicum Township in Bucks County, PA.

WSP USA’s design contract award is for an amount not to exceed $1,771,189. A significant design objective for WSP will entail sequencing the rehabilitation project’s tasks and identifying the range of travel impacts that may be necessary to carry out project construction in 2025.

More specifics on travel impacts won’t be determined until preliminary design work progresses through spring 2024. The Commission wants to begin project work in early 2025, so as not to interfere with business and events during the winter holidays in the host communities’ commercial centers.

The rehabilitation project is expected to have four major tasks:

• Repairing various pieces of the bridge’s steel superstructure;
• Cleaning and repainting of the entire steel superstructure and underlying bearings;
• Repairing the bridge’s abutments, piers, and retaining walls;
• Installing a programmable LED lighting system to highlight the bridge’s architectural profile along the river.

WSP USA engineers have already conducted a detailed bridge inspection. The inspection work identified structural elements that require repair, strengthening or replacement and provided sufficient information for detailing appropriate repairs, including documenting the as-built conditions (e.g., size, connection details, etc.).

The bridge also undergoing separate unrelated federally required biennial inspections this week.

The pre-design inspections also are evaluating the bridge’s walkway to determine if it warrants replacement and evaluating the paint system’s existing conditions for purposes of providing a paint-coating recommendation to aid the bridge’s preservation.

An important task of the pre-design process involves an evaluations of the bridge’s concrete-filled steel-grid walkway to determine if it warrants replacement. The walkway surface was installed in 2001, replacing the walkway installed in 1949.  The bridge originally had a wooden walkway surface. The concrete-filled end sections of the bridge’s open steel-grate roadway also will be examined. Like the walkway, the driving surface originally was wooden planks. This was replaced with an open-grate steel driving surface in 1949 and that was replaced as part of the 2001 bridge rehabilitation.

A significant project design objective for WSP will entail sequencing project tasks to mitigate the range of travel impacts needed to carry out project construction in 2025.

During the latter part of the preliminary design process, two open house sessions (one in Frenchtown, N.J. and one in Tinicum, PA.) are expected to be held for purposes of informing the public about the project’s purpose, revealing substructure and superstructure conditions that need rehabilitation or repair, show bridge architectural lighting renderings, explain any travel restrictions that might be needed to carry out the project’s construction stages, and summarize the project’s anticipated work schedule.  The public would be encouraged to ask questions and provide comment at those sessions.

The aging bridge superstructure has a 15-ton weight limit, a 12-foot, six-inch height restriction, and a 15 MPH speed limit.  It carried an average of 4,200 vehicles per day in 2023.