LAMBERTVILLE, NJ – Two videos related to the 2024-25 New Hope-Lambertville Toll-Supported Bridge Rehabilitation Project have been posted for public viewing on the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission’s YouTube channel.
The longer video is a slide show of project work photographs taken during 2024 and early 2025. The Commission’s engineering department compiled the slide show for display at the bridge’s April 1 rededication ceremony. Bellevue Communications, the Commission’s media consultant, added music to the video prior to its YouTube posting. The groupings of various images show the breadth of work that took place on the 120-year-old bridge, including the unprecedented replacement of a severely deteriorated pin connection earlier this year.
This video – NH LTSB Rehab Slideshow with Music3 — can be viewed at:
https://youtu.be/adHqHSyT0jA
The shorter video consists largely of footage and audio recorded during the April 1 bridge rededication ceremony. The invitation-only event featured remarks by Commission officials and state transportation leaders from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Veteran post commanders from New Hope and Lambertville led the Pledge of Allegiance, the New Hope-Solebury High School Chamber Choir sang the National Anthem, and the Lambertville-based South Hunterdon Regional Elementary School’s Crazy 8s Math Club students led a countdown for the inaugural activation of the bridge’s color-programmable LED architectural lighting system. The event was capped by a march across the bridge’s new walkway by the award-winning South Philadelphia String Band.
This video – New Hope Lambertville Bridge Rededication 2025 – can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/FFRYzrHa57M
The bridge rehabilitation project was carried out by Anselmi & DeCicco Inc. of Maplewood, N.J. Work began in late January 2024 and proceeded through the year into early 2025. The project’s duration had to be lengthened after blast cleaning of the bridge’s painted steel components revealed a severely deteriorated pin connection in one of the bridge’s six spans last summer. The deteriorated pin and several related steel truss connections were replaced during a 10-day-long bridge shutdown in January 2025. The rehabilitation progressed to the point where the bridge reopened to traffic in both directions on February 14.
The major project elements were:
- Cleaned the bridge’s painted surfaces down to bare metal
- Replaced/repaired corroded structural steel components
- Repainted with a three-coat system – prime coat, mid-coat, finish coat
- Replaced compromised joint mortar and reset masonry on abutments, piers, and walls (Note: there was no in-water work with this project)
- Removed the bridge’s aging and noisy slip-prone fiberglass walkway surface and railings; replaced with a new system of slip-resistant and quieter foam-core fiber-reinforced-polymer panels and new railings with integrated LED-cast lighting from the top railings
- Removed cracked or compromised approach sidewalk concrete slabs and installed new concrete sidewalk surfaces
- Removed the bridge’s prior aging electrical-service system and replaced it with new service lines and connections; installed a backup generator
- Installed a color-programmable LED architectural lighting system that highlights the bridge’s profile along the river
- Replaced a deteriorated structure-critical pin assembly that was discovered during the paint-removal process last summer – first time such a pin replacement was ever attempted and executed on a Commission bridge
The New Hope-Lambertville Bridge was constructed in 1904, replacing a wooden bridge that was destroyed in the Pumpkin Flood of October 1903. The bridge opened as a privately owned tolled crossing on July 22, 1904. The bridge has been publicly owned and freed of tolls since January 3, 1920. The Commission has controlled and cared for the bridge since December 1934. Commission ownership of the bridge, however, did not occur until July 1, 1987. Under a federal Compact change that took effect that date, the costs of operating and maintaining the bridge are covered by a share of tolls that the Commission collects at its eight toll bridges. This is the reason the Commission calls it a toll-supported bridge.
The six-span pin-connected steel Pratt-truss bridge is 1,055 feet long, connecting the commercial centers in Lambertville, N.J. and New Hope, PA. More than 12,000 vehicles cross the bridge on an average day. The aging bridge has two travel lanes — one in each direction — and a four-ton weight restriction. A walkway is cantilevered off the bridge’s downstream truss and is believed to be most heavily used among the Commission’s bridges with pedestrian access.
