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Sawtooth Bridges

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The Sawtooth Bridges are a pair of railroad bridges on the Northeast Corridor (NEC) known individually as Amtrak Bridge No. 7.80 and Amtrak Bridge No. 7.96 . They are located in the Meadowlands in Kearny, New Jersey , between Newark Penn Station and Secaucus Junction at a stretch where the rights-of-way of Amtrak , NJ Transit , PATH , and Conrail converge and re-align. The name refers to their appearance and the numbers refer to the milepoint (MP) from New York Penn Station . Originally built by the Pennsylvania Railroad , they are now owned and operated by Amtrak. They are slated for replacement as part of the Gateway Program , an infrastructure-improvement program along the NEC.

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24-760: The viaducts were built in 1907 by the Pennsylvania Railroad as part of its New York Tunnel Extension project, which included the Portal Bridge and the North River Tunnels . The bridges are east of the former Manhattan Transfer station. At this stretch of the Northeast Corridor, the rights-of-way of Amtrak, NJ Transit, PATH, and Conrail converge, run parallel, and re-align. Amtrak Bridge No. 7.80 carries two NEC tracks over four NJ Transit commuter rail tracks used by

48-498: A major transport hub, often multimodal (bus and rail), may be referred to as a transport centre or, in American English , as a transit center . Sections of city streets that are devoted to functioning as transit hubs are referred to as transit malls . In cities with a central station , that station often also functions as a transport hub in addition to being a railway station. Journey planning involving transport hubs

72-464: A new viaduct for NJ Transit Track 5. As of 2020, the projected year for completion was 2029. Viaduct A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide valley, road, river, or other low-lying terrain features and obstacles. The term viaduct

96-559: A number of air carriers including Alaska Airlines , American Airlines , Braniff International Airways , Continental Airlines , Delta Air Lines , Eastern Airlines , Frontier Airlines (1950-1986) , Hughes Airwest , National Airlines (1934-1980) , Pan Am , Trans World Airlines ( TWA ), United Airlines and Western Airlines previously operated such cooperative "through plane" interchange flights on both domestic and/or international services with these schedules appearing in their respective system timetables. Delta Air Lines pioneered

120-607: A repurposed rail viaduct provides a garden promenade on top and workspace for artisans below. The garden promenade is called the Coulée verte René-Dumont while the workspaces in the arches below are the Viaduc des Arts . The project was inaugurated in 1993. Manhattan's High Line , inaugurated in 2009, also uses an elevated train line as a linear urban park . In Indonesia viaducts are used for railways in Java and also for highways such as

144-451: A width of 22 meters. Viaducts are commonly used in many cities that are railroad hubs , such as Chicago, Birmingham, London and Manchester . These viaducts cross the large railroad yards that are needed for freight trains there, and also cross the multi-track railroad lines that are needed for heavy rail traffic. These viaducts provide grade separation and keep highway and city street traffic from having to be continually interrupted by

168-507: Is built across land rather than water, the space below the arches may be used for businesses such as car parking, vehicle repairs, light industry, bars and nightclubs. In the United Kingdom, many railway lines in urban areas have been constructed on viaducts, and so the infrastructure owner Network Rail has an extensive property portfolio in arches under viaducts. In Berlin the space under the arches of elevated subway lines ( S-Bahn )

192-596: Is derived from the Latin via meaning "road", and ducere meaning "to lead". It is a 19th-century derivation from an analogy with ancient Roman aqueducts . Like the Roman aqueducts , many early viaducts comprised a series of arches of roughly equal length. The longest viaduct in antiquity may have been the Pont Serme which crossed wide marshes in southern France. At its longest point, it measured 2,679 meters with

216-483: Is more complicated than direct trips, as journeys will typically require a transfer at the hub. Modern electronic journey planners for public transport have a digital representation of both the stops and transport hubs in a network, to allow them to calculate journeys that include transfers at hubs. Airports have a twofold hub function. First, they concentrate passenger traffic into one place for onward transportation. This makes it important for airports to be connected to

240-407: Is used for several different purposes, including small eateries or bars. Elevated expressways were built in major cities such as Boston ( Central Artery ), Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seoul , Tokyo and Toronto ( Gardiner Expressway ). Some were demolished because they were unappealing and divided the city. In other cases, viaducts were demolished because they were structurally unsafe, such as

264-655: The Bloor-Danforth subway line on the lower deck, over the steep Don River valley . Others were built to span settled areas, crossing over roads beneath—the reason for many viaducts in London. Viaducts over water make use of islands or successive arches. They are often combined with other types of bridges or tunnels to cross navigable waters as viaduct sections, while less expensive to design and build than tunnels or bridges with larger spans, typically lack sufficient horizontal and vertical clearance for large ships. See

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288-542: The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel . The Millau Viaduct is a cable-stayed road-bridge that spans the valley of the river Tarn near Millau in southern France. It opened in 2004 and is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with one pier's summit at 343 metres (1,125 ft). The viaduct Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge in China was the longest bridge in the world as of 2011 . Where a viaduct

312-645: The Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, which was damaged by an earthquake in 1989. However, in developing nations such as Thailand ( Bang Na Expressway , the world's longest road bridge ), India ( Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway ), China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nicaragua, elevated expressways have been built and more are under construction to improve traffic flow, particularly as a workaround of land shortage when built atop surface roads. Other uses have been found for some viaducts. In Paris, France,

336-549: The Hudson Waterfront . The Sawtooth Bridges, considered a part of major bottleneck in the busiest section of the Northeast Corridor, are slated for replacement as part of the Gateway Program , an infrastructure improvement program along 10 miles of the rail line between Newark and New York. The plans call for expansion of the right-of-way to four tracks and would also include the construction of new bridges in

360-822: The Jakarta Inner Ring Road . In January 2019, the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle was closed and replaced with a tunnel after several decades of use because it was seismically unsafe. Transport hub A transport hub is a place where passengers and cargo are exchanged between vehicles and/or between transport modes . Public transport hubs include railway stations , rapid transit stations , bus stops , tram stops , airports , and ferry slips . Freight hubs include classification yards , airports, seaports , and truck terminals, or combinations of these. For private transport by car,

384-718: The Kearny Meadows over Newark Turnpike and Belleville Turnpike . Initial stages of replacement of the nearby Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River began in 2019. In March 2020, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued an environmental assessment. Construction would involve the building of a new bridge (Sawtooth Bridge North), where service would be transferred during the demolition of existing Sawtooth Bridge south and building of its replacement. The project will also build

408-708: The Montclair-Boonton Line , the Morristown Line and the Gladstone Branch . Amtrak Bridge No. 7.96 carries the two NEC tracks over one track of PATH 's Newark–World Trade Center line and the single track Conrail (CRCX) Center Street Branch freight rail line. There is no junction with PATH. East of the bridges at the Kearny Connection /"Swift Interlocking" (MP 7.2) it is possible for NJ Transit Midtown Direct trains on

432-695: The Morris and Essex Lines and Montclair-Boonton Line to enter (via Track 6) and leave the Northeast Corridor . "Hudson Interlocking" (MP8.3) and the single track limited-use NJ Transit "Red Bridge", part of the Waterfront Connection , allows trains access to the NEC when travelling to or from Newark Penn in the west. It is generally used by NJ Transit's North Jersey Coast Line or Raritan Valley Line trains access to Hoboken Terminal on

456-747: The hub and spoke system for aviation in 1955 from its hub in Atlanta, Georgia , United States , in an effort to compete with Eastern Air Lines . FedEx adopted the hub and spoke model for overnight package delivery during the 1970s. When the United States airline industry was deregulated in 1978, Delta's hub and spoke paradigm was adopted by several airlines. Many airlines around the world operate hub-and-spoke systems facilitating passenger connections between their respective flights. Intermodal passenger transport hubs in public transport include bus stations, railway stations and metro stations , while

480-401: The parking lot functions as an unimodal hub. Historically, an interchange service in the scheduled passenger air transport industry involved a "through plane" flight operated by two or more airlines where a single aircraft was used with the individual airlines operating it with their own flight crews on their respective portions of a direct, no-change-of-plane multi-stop flight. In the U.S.,

504-411: The airline does not fly directly between. Airlines have extended the hub-and-spoke model in various ways. One method is to create additional hubs on a regional basis, and to create major routes between the hubs. This reduces the need to travel long distances between nodes that are close together. Another method is to use focus cities to implement point-to-point service for high traffic routes, bypassing

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528-410: The surrounding transport infrastructure, including roads, bus services, and railway and rapid transit systems. Secondly some airports function as intra-modular hubs for the airlines, or airline hubs . This is a common strategy among network airlines who fly only from limited number of airports and usually will make their customers change planes at one of their hubs if they want to get between two cities

552-564: The traffic load, necessitating a viaduct for "through" traffic. Such bridges also lend themselves for use by rail traffic, which requires straighter and flatter routes. Some viaducts have more than one deck, such that one deck has vehicular traffic and another deck carries rail traffic. One example of this is the Prince Edward Viaduct in Toronto, Canada, that carries motor traffic on the top deck as Bloor Street , and metro as

576-445: The train traffic. Likewise, some viaducts carry railroads over large valleys, or they carry railroads over cities with many cross-streets and avenues. Many viaducts over land connect points of similar height in a landscape, usually by bridging a river valley or other eroded opening in an otherwise flat area. Often such valleys had roads descending either side (with a small bridge over the river, where necessary) that become inadequate for

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