Beginning in May, the Connecticut Department of Transportation and Metro-North Railroad will begin a $1 million state-funded project to repair the Devon railroad bridge, which connects Fairfield and New Haven counties along the Metro-North New Haven Line.
The bridge is one of several problematic bridges in Fairfield County, with the 118-year-old Walk Bridge in Norwalk serving as the situation”™s poster child.
The six-month phase of work will make steel repairs and install a new wooden deck and new miter rails on the span of the 110-year-old, four-track bridge that connects Stratford and Milford over the Housatonic River.
- Devon Bridge. Photo by Autumn Driscoll / Hearst Connecticut Media
The project is scheduled to begin May 6 and last through early October, according to the DOT. During that time, the track that connects the main New Haven Line and Waterbury branch will be out of service. A temporary Devon transfer station fitted with lights and a public address system will be constructed on the Milford side of the bridge for commuters transferring from the Waterbury branch.
According to the DOT, a renewal of the bridge”™s 800-plus timber decks will take approximately ten weeks. Construction crews will operate seven days per week during daylight hours. Schedule changes on the New Haven Line are expected, and customers will be notified by station signing and online updates.
After work on that track is completed, a second track of the bridge, which sees over 200 trains pass over it each day, will be taken out of service for wire replacement.
DOT spokesman Judd Everhart said the 1,067-foot-long movable bridge will be replaced altogether beginning in what the department hopes will be 2017, a project that will cost between $750 million and $1 billion. The repairs being made this year are temporary improvements until a new bridge can be built.
“The work that”™s being done is strictly rehabilitation work,” Everhart said. “There are no major replacements of pieces of the bridge.”
The work on the bridge is a prerequisite to the final phase of the DOT”™s $106 million overhead catenary wire replacement upgrade that is targeted for a 2017 completion date.
The Devon Bridge lies east of the halfway point between Stamford and the New Haven Line”™s northern terminus at State Street in New Haven. Often referred to as the Housatonic River Railroad Bridge, it also serves Amtrak”™s Northeast Corridor service. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Devon Bridge project coincides with the removal of five miles of old track along the 27-mile Waterbury branch, which runs from Bridgeport to Waterbury. The old track, which will be removed between April 25 and May 3, is being reused by Central New England Railroad and Naugatuck Railroad Co. as part of the state DOT”™s initiative to spur economic development through expanded freight rail service.
The New Haven Line, which serviced 38.8 million customers in 2012, is the busiest rail line in the United States.
Last fall, Gov. Dannel Malloy announced a plan to replace the Walk Bridge beginning in 2016 funded partially by a $161 million federal grant and a $58 million state grant. The Walk Bridge failed twice last year, stranding Metro-North customers on trains on both occasions.
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