The Irondequoit Bay Bridge is a
continuous truss bridge
A continuous truss bridge is a truss bridge that extends without hinges or joints across three or more supports. A continuous truss bridge may use less material than a series of simple trusses because a continuous truss distributes live loads ...
spanning
Irondequoit Bay
Irondequoit Bay is a large body of water located in northeastern Monroe County, New York. The bay, roughly wide and in length, is fed by Irondequoit Creek to the south and flows into Lake Ontario at its northern end. On average, the surface of ...
in eastern
Monroe County, New York
Monroe County is a county in the U.S. state of New York, located along Lake Ontario's southern shore. As of 2022, the population was 752,035, according to Census Bureau estimates. Its county seat and largest city is Rochester. The county is ...
, in the United States. It is wide and carries the six-lane
New York State Route 104 (NY 104) from the town of
Irondequoit on the west side of the bay to the town of
Webster on the bay's east side. The western approach is just east of NY 104's interchange with
NY 590. The bay bridge was built in 1967, has nine spans and handles an
average
In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...
of 67,229 vehicles per day as of 2006.
Views from the bridge are somewhat obstructed by the concrete side barriers, especially for smaller cars.
Construction
Constructed in 1967 - 1969, the bridge spans Irondequoit Bay from "Newport Point" on the Irondequoit ( west ) side, to "Inspiration Point" on the Webster ( east ) side of the bay. Some 268 piles, with 20 capped clusters, support the bridge, and it is Monroe County's longest bridge. The cost at that time was $7.5 million for the bridge & $17.5 million for the highway approaches, bringing the project total to around $25 million. The bridge was opened on February 3, 1970.
Each section ( truss ) was built on a barge, which was then pulled into position by a tug-boat. After it was positioned, water was pumped into the pontoons of the barge to sink it enough to enable it to be moved from under the truss.
Rehabilitation Project and Structural Issues
Preventive maintenance activity on this bridge is meant to extend the life of the bridge by 12+ years in order to maintain the appropriate maintenance cycle.
The $14 million rehabilitation project, substantially completed 07/01/2013, involved steel and concrete repairs, sandblasting and repainting and replacement of bridge joints. The work necessitated frequent lane closures and, for several weekends in 2012, closure of all the lanes in a given direction while the joint replacements were done.
During the biennial inspection in August (of 2013), a "handful" of the beams were found to be bent downward about a quarter-inch at the outer end — the end that lies at the outer edge of the right-hand lanes. "It's just ever so slight, literally the size of my pencil eraser," Maher said of the deformation. As a result of the discovery, the eastbound and westbound right-hand lanes of the Irondequoit Bay bridge were closed without notice early October 2013
and reopened in March 2014.
References
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Continuous truss bridges in the United States
Bridges completed in 1967
Road bridges in New York (state)
Metal bridges in the United States
Bridges in Monroe County, New York