New York, NY – Hardesty & Hanover (H&H) has received the 2011 Project of the Year Award from The NY Chapter of the New York State Society of Professional Engineers for our work on the project “Replacement of the Northbound Whitestone Expressway Bridge over Flushing River.”  The awards ceremony, an annual dinner event at the Ivy Room of the Cornell Club, will be held on June 15, 2011.  James Bager, PE, H&H’s Project Manager, will present the engineering challenges and successes of the project.

The existing northbound structure was a double leaf bascule bridge built in 1937 with a total span length of 174 feet measured between the centers of the trunnions. The Whitestone Expressway carried five 10’ lanes of traffic merged from Astoria Boulevard/ Grand Central Parkway (GCP) and the northbound Van Wyck Expressway (I-678). The non-standard weaving condition from Astoria Boulevard traffic exiting to Linden Place was causing significant safety and operational deficiencies within this section of the highway.

The alternative chosen from the design study was to replace the non-operational bascule span and its approaches with three high level fixed structures to address the structural deficiencies as well as safety and operation improvement to the existing highway and associated ramps. H&H accepted the challenge to develop design plans of replacing the existing facility while maintaining a daily traffic volume of 90,000 vehicles during stages of construction.