Citing safety concerns at the World Trade Center and other sites, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) has proposed a new law that would ban all mobile and tower cranes from operating in the city when they reach a certain age—in most cases, 25 years—and require all cranes, young and old, to be equipped with load-cycle counters. Opponents argue that the age of a machine is not an indicator of its safeness, citing a 2007 study in California that reached the same conclusion.
The bill came out of two near-misses at the World Trade Center site. In October 2011, a 40-year-old tower crane dropped a 14,000-lb load 100 ft. In February 2012, a 33-year-old tower crane dropped a 48,000-lb load nearly 500 ft. In both cases, the city determined the vintage cranes' hoist drums failed, lacking hydraulic check valves and other fail-safes to stop the free falls. "After these incidents is when the department started looking into this legislation," says a spokeswoman for the buildings department.