A troubled bridge over murky waters
By CARYN A. McBRIDE

 

The Tappan Zee Bridge is a lightning rod for news. The 3-mile span connecting Westchester and Rockland counties attracts all sorts of attention. Commuters curse it. Shipworms eat it. Executives and environmentalists fight over it. Others jump from it.

We all debate its fate.

Replace it?

Repair it?

Ignore it?

Rarely does a day pass that the TZ isn’t in the news. “Punch holes” appear. Traffic snarls. A suicide attempt fails. Or succeeds.

We’ve covered the bridge extensively in our news and editorial pages. And we recently hosted a roundtable discussion with heads of various business, trade and environmental groups. We outlined the alternatives, debated the mass-transit options and winced at the costs.

The bridge fascinates me. I cannot leave it alone – or get away from it. On a recent Friday evening, while dining with colleagues at Sunset Cove in Tarrytown, I gazed out the window at the structure. It was around 6:30 and mist over the Hudson River was rising around the bridge, like a shroud. Rockland wasn’t visible. Neither was the north end of the bridge – it appeared to be sinking into the choppy, murky waters. Creepy, I thought. An omen?

We all agreed it was eerie. Alec went to fetch his camera and came back with the shot printed here.

Later that night, I thought about the Tappan Zee as we drove to the Catskills; we didn’t take the bridge, though, we prefer the Taconic.

I rarely travel the TZ. No need. I live and work in Westchester. I do share the mummifying excitement of the Friday night gridlock occasionally, as traffic over the bridge backs up onto I-287. However, as the editor of this newspaper I do have a vested interest in how it affects the region’s business community. Of course I have concerns about the safety of the structure and those who travel on it each day.

I am fixated with the bridge.

Why the fascination?

It’s not because the bridge has passed its expiration date. It was built to last 50 years; it’s nearly 53. I had asked a former governor his thoughts. He compared the bridge to Cher on her 60th birthday – “nothing on that bridge is 52 years old … everything has been replaced.”

But its age-defying appearance is not what amazes me.

Nor is its allure to jumpers. Two in one day recently. Tragic, yes. Surprising, no.

What amazes me about the bridge is that despite all the problems we’ve all been talking about for years, we still do not have a solution.

“(Former Gov.) Malcolm Wilson was talking about this 30 years ago,” John McCarthy, principal of McCarthy Associates remarked at our TZ discussion last month. “Who’s going to spearhead this?”

Good point.

The state is reviewing a number of alternatives for the bridge – they are listed on tzbsite.com – and has put together a project team with reps from the Department of Transportation, Thruway Authority and Metro-North Railroad.

The team plans to make its formal recommendation for the bridge next month.

“We are working toward making those findings known in the May timeframe,” Michael Anderson, project team leader, said in a phone conversation last week.

When asked about estimated costs and a date for announcing the plan, he said it was “premature.”

“We’re still working on numbers.”

And the numbers are huge. As it stands now – no pun intended – a new bridge would cost upwards of $15 billion (in current dollars).

Privatization of the bridge has resurfaced in talks lately. A public/private partnership is an idea worth pursuing. We cannot expect taxpayers to shoulder the burden alone.

Earlier this year, I asked then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer about the bridge. He said the state was committed to a timetable for coming up with a proposal to either rebuild it or replace it. The funding factor, he noted, was “the 800-pound gorilla,” and he mentioned a private/public partnership.

I tried to catch up with Gov. David Paterson on Tuesday but his press secretary said they were busy working on the state budget, which missed its April 1 deadline. The governor was spotted at Shea Stadium that afternoon, catching the Mets game – he also caught some shots for this.

In fairness to Paterson, he does have a lot on his plate following the abrupt downfall of the Spitzer administration. The state is facing a $4.6 billion deficit and the budget calls for a 4.4 percent spending increase, which Paterson warned needs trimming.

At press time, lawmakers were expressing confidence they would pass the $124 billion budget with $1 billion in new fees and taxes. I, too, was confident – not that the budget would pass last week but that it would include lots of new fees and taxes.

With respect to Paterson, we’ll give him time to settle some of these other matters and then reach out to him for his take on the bridge.

As for the best option for the TZ, I’m not a structural engineer so I’ll leave the designs to those qualified in that area. I do believe we need a new bridge, one that incorporates some form of mass transit and a plan to pay for it.

I checked in with Marsha Gordon, president of The Business Council of Westchester and co-chairperson of the Tappan Zee Bridge/I287 Futures Task Force. “We have always supported a new bridge, with an east-west commuter rail,” she said. “We have always thought that is the preferred option.”

Still, she cautioned, we have to consider what’s realistic. I concur. Build the bridge already. If it’s not economically feasible to include the mass-transit component simultaneously, fine, build the bridge anyway. Just make sure it has the capacity to add a rail or other mass-transit component in the future.

“The most important thing is to have east-west transit across I-287 that is on a dedicated path,” Gordon emphasized.

Once the state makes its final recommendations, someone must take the lead in pushing the project forward. We cannot afford this snail’s pace. Costs will keep rising, punch holes will continue forming and traffic will keep piling up. This project is too important – it extends beyond this region.

Let’s get moving.

“The Hudson Valley is not good at coming together and demanding things,” Maureen Morgan of Federated Conservationists of Westchester and a columnist in this newspaper, said during our roundtable. “The apathy in this area is beyond comprehension.”

That apathy could cost us dearly should a photo prove prophetic.

 

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