The study of the Tappan Zee Bridge has gone on long enough and needs to be completed as soon as possible, Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino told an audience in midtown Manhattan last week.
In fact, he implored Gov. Andrew Cuomo to take a leadership position and get the process moving toward construction.
“It is time to finish the planning for the bridge that we are actually going to build and move on to construction,” Astorino said.
Astorino was the keynote speaker at a June 22 conference titled “Replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge: New York State”™s Ultimate Infrastructure Challenge” held in Manhattan and sponsored by the Business Council of Westchester and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. While saying he was not critical of the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 Corridor Project that has been studying the possibility of building a new bridge for years, Astorino said, “It is time for the planners and the engineers to put their pencils down.”
He criticized the study process, which has forced engineers and planners to “plan for every eventuality” and characterized the estimated $83 million that has been spent thus far by the state on the Tappan Zee Bridge as “governmental malpractice.”
“Ten years and we don”™t even have a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) out for public review. That is disgraceful,” Astorino said.
Neither the governor”™s office nor the state Department of Transportation, which is leading the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 Corridor Project group study, returned calls for comment at press time.
The Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 Corridor Project group held a stakeholder”™s meeting at the New York Power Authority offices in White Plains last October and revealed that the group”™s consultants had pared down from six to two the possible new bridge designs that were to undergo extensive review as part of the DEIS process.
At the time the group said it expected to complete the draft statement, hold public hearings and begin work on the final environmental impact statement, or FEIS, this year. Its timeline called for the completion of the FEIS in 2012 and to begin the Tier 2 Transit DEIS, design and permitting in 2013, which would continue into 2014. The study group projected that construction could begin on the transit-ready bridge and highway construction related to the project in 2015 if sufficient financing has been secured.
Merrill Lynch, which has been retained as a consultant to study possible sources of financing for a new bridge, has not yet released its findings.
To date no financing, with the exception of the funds for the actual bridge study, has been earmarked by either the state or federal governments for the bridge construction.
“We have to have a plan that is practical enough to get the bridge built. The time has come to shape the vision for a new bridge into something that we have the resources and the will to build,” Astorino said. “Put it another way, we can”™t wait for the perfect solution.”
Noting that estimates for the bridge construction are anywhere from $9.3 billion (with a bus rapid transit component) to $16 billion (with bus rapid transit and commuter rail), Astorino said that while commuter rail over the bridge would be advantageous, “How realistic is it to add $6 billion to a $9 billion project, when we don”™t have the first $9 billion?”
He said the designs should not preclude commuter rail, but due to its cost it should be viewed as an option down the road.
Astorino said there is currently a “vacuum of indifference” that surrounds the project. He called on fellow county executives, state and local officials as well as Westchester”™s Congressional delegation to get more involved, but threw down the political gauntlet to Cuomo to get the project moving.
“The practical and political reality is that rebuilding the Tappan Zee Bridge must be a priority of the governor,” he said. Astorino later added that while other politicos must get involved, “the leadership must come from Gov. Cuomo because he more than anyone else controls the levers and resources of government to get the job done.”
He said he is ready to stand with the governor to get the bridge built.
“I am willing to invest whatever political capital I can bring to getting a new bridge built,” Astorino said. “But we must make the rebuilding a priority. Otherwise, the future will be filled with nothing but more studies.”
Other speakers at the event were: Christopher Waite, a former state Thruway official and senior vice president of Haks Engineers; Mary Ann Crotty, a former senior adviser to then-Gov. Mario Cuomo and president of Macro Associates; Barry LePatner, an attorney and author with LePatner & Associates L.L.P.; Ross Pepe, president of the Construction Industry Council of Westchester & Hudson Valley Inc. and the Building Contractors Association Westchester & the Mid Hudson Region of Tarrytown; and moderator Edmund J. McMahon, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany.
Astorino and all of the speakers agreed the bridge must be replaced and is costing the state approximately $150 million a year to maintain.
One speaker indicated that a scenario where the Thruway Authority closes the bridge to all traffic, similar to what occurred in 2009 when the state Department of Transportation closed (and eventually demolished) the Lake Champlain Bridge, would be disastrous for the downstate New York economy.
