Newsday from New York, New York • 22

20 Cracks, Flags and City Politics the number of flags keeps increasing, says transportation engineer Deitch. We may very well be at the maximum point now. A nearly completed state inspection that began in October has found 388 red flags on the Manhattan -Bridge, more than the Williamsburg had when it was dosed. Most of the damage is on the lower level, which supports three lanes of traffic and all the subway tracks. It accounts for 316 red flags.

Most of the flags are under the traffic lanes, not the subway tracks, in the cross-hatch system of stringers, floor beams and plates that support the roadway. During business hours traffic agents restrict the lower roadway to passenger cars. At night when there is no enforcement, the roadway is off-limits to all traffic. But the explosion of red flags is deceptive. While deterioration on the bridge is accelerating, engineers say, some of the rise in the flags is artificial, prompted by recordkeeping change.

In the past, many related or redundant problems were counted as one; today each is counted separately. In 1988, nine damaged steel beams in a row were counted as one problem; today they are counted as nine. This is not to say the roadway does not have problems, but the problems have been well-documented and are being fixed or routinely monitored. There are thousands of cracks in the steal beams that support the bridge, engineers say. For years, engineers have tried, often in vain, to stem the cracking by drilling holes in the metal.

The holes, about the size of the entrance to a birdhouse, are supposed to act like firebreaks in a forest, stopping the cracks before they can spread further. Instead, engineers say, the cracks often branch out in other directions. The bridge has not had pedestrian walkways for about a decade. The alleys where the walkways used to be are covered over with weather-beaten boards, providing a dizzying view of the river below and a treacherous catwalk used by engineers and repair workers. The decay, engineers say, is emblematic of decades of neglect throughout the citys system of more than 1,400 bridges.

Bridges, say those who love them, need constant care. With basic maintenance, such as cleaning, oiling and painting, the Manhattan Bridge had a life expectancy of at least 150 -years. Even with virtually no maintenance in the past 20 years, it has lasted 82 years. With rehabilitation, it could last a century mare, and that, engineers say, is the challenge to the city. We have the most interesting bridges in the world.

Everybody envies our problems, says Bqjidar Yanev, an engineer who trained in earthquake damage at the University of California at Berkeley. Now chief of bridge inspections for the city, he is thrilled by the calamity of it all. In Paris, the bridges are boring. They showed me a bridge over the Seine that had been fixed once they replaced a stone in the 16th century. I fell asleep." Although assessing the condition of the citys bridges appears to be a science, it is also an art, engineers admit.

Yanev likes to call the bridges these big animals, affectionately suggesting that they are living creatures, con-foundingiy fickle. While statistics about red flags and yellow flags provide a yardstick of deterioration and a management tool, what constitutes an emergency is- a highly subjective decision, engineers say. Not all flags are equal. In technical terms, red flags are defined as potential structural failures that have to be analyzed, if not fixed, within six weeks. In real terms, a red flag could range from a crack that is in little danger of spreading to a potentially life-threatening slipped beam.

Somebodys red flag is somebody elses defect, says Yanev. Its judgmental to the highest degree. You have to understand that when you go to a bridge, it doesnt say, I have a red flag. An engineer who is unfamiliar with the bridge tends to red-1 everything so he doesnt get haunt by it later. In the past two years, the city has stepped up inspection of its bridges, increasing the number of inspectors from three to 40, and that too has contributed to the rising number flags.

Its like catching fish, admits Ross Sandler, the former transportation commissioner who closed the Williamsburg Bridge. It depends on how many fish there are and how much effort you BRIDGES from Page 3 And cries that city funding for bridges is in jeopardy are exaggerated. While other city services including education are taking huge cuts in their budget because of the citys fiscal crisis, the citys ambitious program to repair and maintain bridges is largely on track. The rate of spending is not expanding as rapidly as planned, but it is not being cut back from current levels. Many officials who have studied the problem contend that the crisis on the Manhattan Bridge is more one of confidence than of reality, bom of what they say are unfounded fears that the mistakes of the past will be repeated, not of true shortages of dollars and steel.

Experts say the hazards have peaked and are a pale imitation of the festering corrosion that closed the Williamsburg Bridge to all but pedestrian and bicycle traffic three years ago. "I wouldnt even compare them, says Ira Deitch, chief of bridge inspections for the state Department of Transportation. The closing of the Williamsburg Bridge marked a turning point in the history of New Yorks crumbling bridges. It spurred a commitment to rebuilding and maintaining the citys bridges that has not been seen since the golden age of New York Citys bridge building at the turn of the century. Now, the crisis has returned, this time centering on the Manhattan Bridge.

Among the four East River crossings, it beau's the most traffic, taking 350,000 commuters a day between Chinatown in Manhattan and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. Like Pentagon generals and defense contractors seeking billions for a new missile system, bridge advocates from city officials to the civil enginering departments at the citys top universities have been arguing that without a huge maintenance and rebuilding campaign, supported by a separate system of taxation, the bridges might someday fall into the river. In the battle of beams vs. butter, they urge that bridges get more, even if it means lees spending on schools and social services. How bad is the Manhattan Bridge? No one disputes that the bridge has problems, including fundamental design flaws noticed soon after it opened in 1909.

It is overly flexible, a peculiarity of other bridges designed by the same engineer, Leon MoisseifT, that could not be detected before the era of wind tunnels and computer models. It twists sharply from side to side when the subways, located on the outer edges, pass over it. The constant twisting, as much as five feet, has increased metal fatigue and cracking, engineers say. A policy of deferred maintenance has also accelerated the aging process. But experts say the problems are manageable.

Temporary repairs and reconstruction now in the pipeline, they say, will stabilize the condition of the bridge within the next two years. In this decade, the city will spend $450 million to stiffen and reconstruct the bridge, including the replacement of the network of cracked and rusted beams under the lower roadway, the prevailing problem. With the amount of work being done now and in the next two years, Id be surprised if mih BEAM put into catching them. City budget officials complain that bridge inspectors are always more diligent during budget season and at times of fiscal crisis as a way of making their case for more money. Bridge officials say only they can figure out how much to spend.

There is a strong body of wisdom that preventive maintenance, which has been at best sporadic for the past half century, is the key to preserving the citys bridges. To cheat on maintenance now, engineers say, cuts the life of any bridge dramatically, and the immediate savings are squandered many times over in the cost of future repairs and rehabilitation. The climate surrounding the citys bridges has changed radically and irrevocably since the closing of the Williamsburg Bridge, and it is that crisis mentality, more than anything else, that has set the terms of the debate over the condition of the Manhattan Bridge. The need to develop a constituency fin bridges and to make them the citys highest priority has become an article of faith for many of those who run the citys bridges, a crusade of cultlike fervor. Like Robert Moses, New Yorks legendary city planner, the bridge barons have discovered that getting attention is half the battle.

Sandler tells how the Koch administration realized that it had to become religious about preventive And David Steinberger, deputy commissioner of the city Transporation De-. partments Bureau of Bridges until he was dismissed last month in an angry dispute with his boss, sometimes cited portions of The Power Broker, a biography of Robert Moses, as a model for the way he should conduct himself, former colleagues recall. Until the day he was dismissed, Steinberger waged an aggressive campaign with City Hall for faster expansion of the citys preventive maintenance program. He also called for doubling the budget for flag repairs from $15 million to $30 million a year. In a memo to the city budget office Jan.

8, two days before he was fired, Steinberger accused the Dinkins administration of reverting to the same myopic policies that caused the crisis. He argued that every $1 million spent annually on preventive maintenance would save $4 million in reconstruction and repair costs. Budget officials, for their part, complain that the city has immediate needs like retaining teachers that it must balance against hypothetical ones, like the possibility that the Manhattan Bridge could collapse. Designing a budget around the fear that a bridge will collapse is about as prudent, they say, as spending your money worrying about the possibility of global warming, while cutting your milk program for babies. When times are as bad as they are, there are an amazing number of competing needs, says Michael Jacobsen, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Its tough to say whether bridge maintenance is more important than laying off teachers or nurses. Budget officials say that bridges, and especially the East River bridges, remain a top priority of the Dinkins adminis- V.1' NEW YORK NEWS DAY, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11. 1991 imnnAne Jim CUlHfllillB SUPPORT: A threaded pin is placed at a switching section of a subway track on the derailment. Manhattan Bridge to keep the two beams from slipping apart and causing a derailm y. lv-.

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