NJ Transit starts key phase of new Raritan River rail bridge

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PERTH AMBOY — The second phase of a massive three-phase project to rebuild NJ Transit's Raritan River Bridge began on a sweltering Tuesday, June 24.
"So many of the coastal towns, of which I live in one, are going to be impacted positively by this," Gov. Phil Murphy, a Red Bank resident, said at a groundbreaking ceremony for the project. "We have to remember, this is a bridge that was built when William Howard Taft was in office.
"To say that it's overdue to get this sucker into the 21st century is, I think, probably the understatement of the year," he said.
This swing bridge is a key crossing, as it connects 17 of the 20 stations exclusively on the North Jersey Coast Line before it meets up with the Northeast Corridor on the way to New York Penn Station.The bridge was originally built in 1908 and is two years older than the notorious Portal Bridge, which is being replaced through a $2.3 billion project currently underway in Kearny.
About 11,500 commuters use the North Jersey Coast Line on any given weekday, and some 2 million tons of Conrail freight also traverses this route annually.
The bridge was shut down for 18 days after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 when it suffered substantial damage from flooding and debris, requiring the deck to be realigned.
"That's why when the governor and the Legislature and the [Transportation Department] chairman all got together and said, 'What is the most important project after Portal?' this was the one that was identified," said Kris Kolluri, president and CEO of NJ Transit.
Skanska Koch Inc., of Carteret, was awarded a $444.3 million contract in December 2024 to do the second phase of construction on this project, which includes building the lift portion of the bridge and the flanking spans, as well as installing the communications, signal and overhead catenary wire.
Skanska — also the lead contractor on the Portal Bridge replacement project — was one of three contractors whose bids were reviewed for the Raritan River Bridge project's second phase, which is expected to be finished around October 2029.
George Harms Construction Co. Inc., of Farmingdale, was the contractor on the first phase of the project, which began in May 2020 and wrapped up last year. When that project got started, it was estimated to cost about $248 million.
Hardesty & Hanover and Gannett Fleming are the joint venture behind the design of the bridge. AECOM/Mott MacDonald is the joint venture construction management consultant, which was approved for a contract of nearly $34 million in October 2019.
The replacement bridge will include a lift feature, instead of swinging open to marine traffic as it does now. It will be 10 feet wider than the current bridge and will be elevated higher than the current one so its profile will be above the 100-year floodplain. Trains will be able to go up to 60 miles per hour on this bridge; currently, they slow to 30 miles per hour.
NJ Transit secured a $446 million federal grant for the program, through the Federal Transit Administration's Emergency Relief Program for resilience projects in response to Superstorm Sandy.
NJ Transit also said last year that it transferred about $240 million from the canceled Transitgrid power project and put it toward the Raritan River Bridge program, but a question about how that money fits in with the project's financing was not yet answered by an agency spokesman.
The third portion of the program will demolish the old bridge.
So far, the price tag for the first two phases is more than $692.3 million, well over the entire three-phase original estimate of $595 million.
"The biggest variable in this project is cost of steel," Kolluri said. The superstructure will be made of steel, and the concrete piers will also be reinforced with steel.
"The cost estimate was developed pre-pandemic and the contracts were awarded post-pandemic, and through the interim period, the cost of steel went up by a substantial amount," he added.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ Transit starts key phase of Raritan River rail bridge