The New Performance Based Seismic Design Criteria for New York City

摘要

New York City (NYC) has a total of 2115 bridges. New York City Department of Bridges (NYCDOT) owns 787 of them. Of these, about 20 fall in the bridge importance category of "critical", 245 "Essential", and 522 "Other" from the seismic point of view. Remaining bridges are owned by local agencies-NYSDOT, PANYNJ, TBTA, NYCTA, SIRT, LIRR, O-RR, and misc. owners. The paper will discuss recent seismic evaluations of such bridges under the new seismic design criteria guidelines and the new hard rock ground motions recommended by the consensus of a panel of national experts specializing in NYC region's geology and seismicity. The history of how these guidelines came into the final form and how the performance based seismic criteria was developed and implemented will also be discussed.