The board also approved an $11.7 million contract to monitor the construction, awarded to a joint venture of Urban Engineers Inc. and URS Corp. of Philadelphia.
Construction crews will take out one lane of traffic at a time beginning early next year, DRPA Chief Executive John Matheussen said.
"We've worked real hard to try to inconvenience the traveling public as little as possible," Matheussen said.
The Walt Whitman, which carried nearly 40 million vehicles last year, is the busiest of the four Delaware River toll bridges operated by the DRPA between Philadelphia and South Jersey. Opened to traffic on May 16, 1957, it is the second oldest of the bridges, about 31 years newer than the Ben Franklin Bridge.
The Whitman and Franklin bridges are both deemed "functionally obsolete" because of their age and some outdated design features.
The contract includes financial bonuses for early completion and penalties for finishing late, so the DRPA hopes the work will be done before the end of the three-year, 10-month contract, Matheussen said.
The long-planned bridge work is part of a five-year capital budget being paid for with toll increases. The first of two scheduled toll increases went into effect in September 2008, when car tolls were raised to $4 from $3. The second toll increase, to $5, is scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2011.
The construction will replace the steel decking and asphalt paving, as well electrical and communication cables and existing drainage structures.
The repairs of the Whitman will be more expensive than the bridge itself cost when it was built. The cost of construction of the seven-lane, 11,981-foot-long bridge in 1957 was $86.9 million.
