Posted on 04/13/2006 8:05:30 AM PDT by dead
What does it take to change light bulbs on the 75-foot rotunda ceiling of the massive Secaucus rail station?
First, crack a hole in the roof big enough to drive a crane through. Then, hoist a crane onto the roof using, well, another crane. Build a ramp, widen a doorway and protect the interior floor with some plywood.
Then you can start thinking about unscrewing a light bulb.
The $700 million Secaucus Junction station was built with no easy way to change the bulbs that surround the rotunda skylight. And as more and more lights have grown dim over the past several months, bringing in a crane was the only solution.
Why?
Mark Sheeleigh of Manhattan-based Brennan Beer Gorman, the architecture firm that designed the station, had a ready answer.
"We were going for something dramatic, similar to the waiting areas in old stations, like Hoboken," he said, when asked about other solutions such as scaffolding or catwalks. "Scaffolding might block the skylight."
The cost of the operation will be covered under NJ Transit's maintenance contract with Control Building Services of Secaucus, agency spokeswoman Penny Bassett Hackett said.
A spokesman for Control could not provide a total figure, but crane rental alone will likely top $10,000. Then manpower, carpenter work and the bulbs themselves -- 608 of them -- must be accounted for.
Rail commuters were dumbstruck when they learned of the Secaucus high-wire act.
"Any large facility, like a sports arena or a convention hall, builds in simple, inexpensive ways of performing routine maintenance, but not this one, I guess," said Mahwah's Gene Corrado, who passes through the station twice a day.
Corrado still can't understand why NJ Transit never built a parking lot near the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station at Secaucus Junction. Others, like commuter James Donovan, are still angry about seldom-used New Jersey Turnpike exit 15X, which opened near the station last year.
"This is the most ridiculous way to change a light bulb that I've ever heard," said Donovan, of Glen Rock. "Are these the same people who built the exit ramp to nowhere?"
But NJ Transit and Control dismissed any notion that the cost or work involved was extreme.
"Architects design these beautiful buildings and they don't think about how you're going to maintain them," said Control's district manager, Peter Manetti. "But it's just high. It's something that can be done."
"It's standard operating procedure," insisted Tom Gallo, the station's operations manager. "It's no different from the kind of maintenance they do at malls."
The operation began in Tuesday's early morning hours, but it's not over yet.
"It'll take us a couple of weeks," said Vito Fragola, Control's site manager, when interviewed on the rotunda floor early Tuesday morning.
Here's how it was done:
First, a large crane was rented to hoist a smaller crane, known as a Denka Lift, onto the roof of the station, Gallo said. The lift was rolled though a hole cut in the roof onto a makeshift ramp and into a storage room. A doorway was cut out of a wall to give the crane access to the corridor that leads to the rotunda.
Plywood was positioned to protect the stone floor while the crane moved some 200 yards down the corridor. It was anchored to the rotunda floor, where a worker climbed inside a bucket and was hoisted to the ceiling.
The cost to rent a Denka Lift exceeds $4,000 a week, according to United Rental of Ridgefield Park, which supplied the interior crane. A spokesman for Dun-Rite, a heavy-equipment rental firm in the Bronx, would not provide figures for the cost to lease the larger crane.
United Rental salesman Brian Law said it was known from the start that replacing the bulbs would be a problem.
"We tried to get NJ Transit to put the cost of a lift into the construction contract, but they weren't interested at the time," he said.
Cathedral ceilings were common in old-fashioned rail centers, like the Hoboken station, said Sheeleigh, and they are common today in malls and office parks. With its impressive 2,000-square-foot skylight at the top of the rotunda, the interior of the 900-foot-long rail station resembles a mall or office building in some ways.
Although skylights are impressive, architects agree that one of their disadvantages -- besides the fact that they often leak and are difficult to clean -- is that the glass on the ceiling limits the amount of surface space available to install electric lighting.
Unless lights are attached to hydraulics that can lower them to the floor, or they're accessible via built-in scaffolding, replacing them one at a time can be impractical, said Sheeleigh and Bassett Hackett.
"We don't replace them as they burn out," said Bassett Hackett, the NJ Transit spokeswoman. "We usually replace a group of them, and we coordinate this operation with other uses for the crane, such as cleaning."
Asked when the lights had last been replaced, Gallo said it had been about two years. Actually, this week is the first time. The station opened 28 months ago and the lights have been slowly burning out since then.
John Cichowski, The Record's Road Warrior, can be e-mailed at: cichowski@northjersey.com
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Of course this sounds preposterous. A crane to change a bulb? How about a lift? Or a very tall ladder? I still don’t know why scaffolding wouldn’t work. Boondoogle indeed.
But, all this cutting of the roof and doorways... wouldn’t it simply be easier to dis-assemble a crane and re-assemble it inside the station, than to drop one in through the roof and then cut through a doorway?
I work at a building which has a 28 ft warehouse. We use a forklift to change the bulbs. How high is this ceiling?
This makes so little sense, if it was privately owned you’d bet the owner would figure out a way to change the bulbs for 1/100th the cost or less.
Yes exactly. Rail it in was another one of my thoughts. This sounds just plain stupid. This is an example why government should not be involved in these things. All these cash-strapped governments should sell off these assets.
What about using this?
Lol, this all sounds like a Texas Aggie joke - how many Aggies does it take to change a light bulb??
I hope they used long-life bulbs.
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New Jersey is not a destination
Mad Magazine cover story of yore:
“I got lost in Patterson New Jersey!”
Sam Colt’s first maufacturing venture with local NJ bankers backing him started in Patterson, NJ
After they ripped Sam off he tried Whitney in Whitneyville, CT
A year of that mess and Sam set up his own plant in Hartford, CT
That sounds like a job Americans don't want.
Sounds like too many ‘cooks in the kitchen’ in New Jersey to get things done right judging from other comments in the article.
Interesting about Colt, you would know all about that!
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Sounds like those architects and engineers could have worked on designing the WTC floor trusses in NYC
Light, cheap, weak under heat, max profits, each fastened by a total only 3 small Grade 8 bolts
- 1 small bolt at one end
- 2 small bolts at the other end
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Each wheel on your family vehicle is attached by five Grade 8 or stronger bolts
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But what do I know......
[But what do I know......]
snicker!
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