Decisions to not consider mass transit or private funding sources for a new Tappan Zee Bridge were directly tied to the push to have construction under way in 2012, according to state Department of Transportation Commissioner Joan McDonald.
Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Construction Industry Council, McDonald offered few new details as to how the state would finance Gov. Andrew Cuomo”™s ambitious economic development plans, which include a $25 billion infrastructure fund and a new Tappan Zee Bridge.
One thing for certain though is that public-private partnerships will be paramount moving forward, she said.
“The priority is to maximize funding, whether it be public or private, and I think that is a brand new way of looking at things,” McDonald said in an interview prior to the luncheon at the DoubleTree Hotel in Tarrytown.
She added that funding for most transportation-related projects would likely continue to originate from the public sector, but “when you look at some of the economic development initiatives there will be a lot of private investment.”
Cuomo will reveal additional details surrounding the infrastructure fund at his budget presentation to the Legislature on Jan. 19, McDonald said.
Public-private partnerships were a central tenet of many of the public comments and actions taken by Cuomo during the latter half of 2011, leading developers and business advocacy groups to question the initial announcement by the DOT and New York State Thruway Authority that private sources of funding would not be considered for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project.
However, McDonald said that incorporating private financing would add an extra year to the projected start date.
“His (Cuomo”™s) mandate to all of us at DOT and at the Thruway Authority is to do everything in our power to start construction in 2012,” she said. “If we were looking at a public-private partnership from the teams, that requires a different level of analysis (and) evaluation and would probably have added a year to the process.”
She said that the DOT, Thruway Authority and the federal agencies involved in the project are currently evaluating all state and federal public funding sources, but offered no other specifics as to how the $5.2 billion project would be financed.
While the decision has ultimately been made not to include mass transit components in the construction of a new bridge, public officials and private organizations have continued to debate the best course of action.
McDonald said the rationale behind not incorporating a mass transit component into a new bridge is also related to timing and logistics ”“ and of course, money.
“The reason is partly money ”“ to do transit at this point in time would add another $4 billion to $10 billion to the capital costs alone,” she said.
Additionally, she said the inclusion of mass transit components would have resulted in the same delays that were encountered with the last proposal, namely, a 30-mile corridor redevelopment plan that immediately ran into major opposition and was scrapped for the current plan.
“Whether its bus rapid transit or commuter rail, where stations are sited has very local impacts,” she said. “What you have to do for each of those is appropriately size a station and parking facility and you have to evaluate the local traffic impacts … so all that would have taken time and cost money and it would not have met our goal of going into construction this year.”
The bridge replacement project is currently moving along on schedule with the draft environmental impact statement scheduled to be made public on Jan. 19, followed by a 45-day public comment period, McDonald said.
Project directors are also in the process of narrowing down design-build proposals following a Jan. 10 deadline for initial submissions. It was not know as of press time how many proposals were received.
