Replacing the Tappan Zee

This past Friday, the NYS Thruway Authority and the state Department of Transportation announced that they would go ahead and build a new Tappan Zee Bridge to replace the existing span. They found that it would cost as much to repair the aging Tappan Zee bridge as it would to replace the bridge. Repairing the bridge would have meant rebuilding nearly 80% of the structure to make it meet current building practices.

However, has anyone actually looked at the price tag? $16 billion? How exactly is that going to be paid for in the current economic climate? That, above all else, will be the question that has to be addressed.

If you do manage to get the financing (and the bridge replacement was first floated in 1999 by Gov. Pataki), what exactly are we getting for this? We're supposed to get a new and improved span that will handle regular vehicle traffic plus bus rapid transit plus the infrastructure to run heavy rail over the span at a later date. That breaks out to $6.4 billion for the new span, $6.7 billion for the commuter rail component, and $2.9 billion for bus rapid transit and highway improvements. So, we're still talking what will likely be $10 billion for just the bridge and bus rapid transit along with the associated improvements to the highway along the Westchester/Rockland corridor. The costs are likely to go up from there because of demand for materials in the region with other major projects underway.

The I-87/287 corridor between Westchester and Rockland counties has become heavily congested, and the idea is that the Tappan Zee will include bus rapid transit plus a heavy rail component so that commuters could have a 1-seat ride into Manhattan from Rockland county and reduce vehicle traffic. The span was critical in cross-Hudson traffic in the days following the 9/11 attacks when all bridges and tunnels to the South along the Hudson were closed. However, the bridge suffers from numerous flaws, not the least of which is a lack of breakdown lanes that means that accidents or vehicle breakdowns will block active lanes of traffic causing significant backups.

As great a supporter of mass transit, I think the commuter rail component is a misguided approach at best. One-seat rides make sense when you have a critical mass of commuters who will travel the route. That isn't likely here. What would encourage more people to take mass transit is two-fold. A one-seat ride is already promised for

Increase the amount of parking at train and bus stops where people are already clamoring for additional spots. Increasing the frequency of trips, both off-peak and during rush hour will encourage people to get out of their cars because they will have more flexibility in their commutes and not worry about waiting 30-45 minutes or more for the next bus/train to arrive.

At the same time, New Jersey and New York are in the process of building a new multibillion dollar rail tunnel alongside the existing Northeast corridor rail tunnels into Midtown, and that comes with the expectation that riders from Northern New Jersey and Rockland and Orange counties would have one-seat rides to Penn Station at some point once the connection is made. That means that the Tappan Zee span would be redundant and not necessarily cost effective.

I suspect that the Tappan Zee span's multiple uses will be pared down to car and bus rapid transit, skipping the commuter rail precisely because there is insufficient train traffic to warrant this. There is one way that the new span should include heavy rail - and that's if it serves as a high-speed connector that goes up to Stewart Airport to link the airport to Midtown and reduce traffic congestion at the other three NYC area airports. However, it doesn't look like the proposal includes a Stewart Airport link.