Bridges

Last night, hundreds of Rockland County residents gathered at the Palisades Mall to tell the Cuomo administration that a transit-free replacement Tappan Zee Bridge isn't acceptable. In Westchester, too, support for transit across the bridge is running high. Three more local governments have passed unanimous resolutions supporting Tappan Zee transit: the city of Yonkers, the town of Greenburgh and the village of Dobbs Ferry.

Support for transit ran high at the first of two public hearings on the Tappan Zee draft environmental impact statement at the Palisades Mall in Rockland last night.

Governor Andrew Cuomo may have axed plans ten years in the making to build transit across the Tappan Zee Bridge, but hey, at least he promised to consider turning the old structure into a park, right?

A discussion of the plans for the new Tappan Zee Bridge by the state cabinet today makes clear one thing -- that the Cuomo administration continues to race to construction as fast as possible -- while leaving other facets more confused and contradictory than ever.

As advocates for transit on the Tappan Zee Bridge take to the airwaves, the media are starting to ask questions about the Cuomo administration's ever-shifting and unexplained cost estimates for the project.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is looking to enlist car commuters in the fight for transit on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Using a federal loan to finance $2 billion of the cost of the Tappan Zee Bridge could delay construction work significantly, warns trade journal Project Finance today. Trading time for a low interest rate might save money, but it puts the lie to the Cuomo administration's claim that adding transit would unacceptably slow the Tappan Zee project.

As part of an application for a $2 billion federal loan to help pay for a replacement Tappan Zee Bridge that would double the width of the current bridge, the Cuomo administration has put forward a new and much-higher estimate of the project's cost: $6 billion. That's $800 million higher than previous press reports had stated, and $1.4 billion more than the state put forward in its draft environmental impact statement. The loan application also suggests that the administration will use toll revenues to repay the feds, meaning potentially huge toll hikes for Tappan Zee drivers without providing any effective transit option as an alternative.

New York State is on the verge of undertaking one of the largest transportation projects in the nation: the replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge. Over the course of 10 years and 280 public meetings, Hudson Valley residents, business owners, elected officials and environmental advocates built a consensus that transit was a vital component of the Tappan Zee Bridge project.