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Yesterday state officials announced that they have chosen to forgo plans to repair the Tappan Zee Bridge and instead intend to build an entirely new one. The new bridge would also include new a new commuter rail line to link up with Metro North and high-speed bus lanes at a total cost of $16 billion.
After a review of the proposal and a look into alternatives, the earliest the new bridge would open is 2016, just north of the current Tappan Zee. A new bridge was first proposed by then Governor Pataki in 1999. Officials yesterday said that while the current bridge is safe, it does not meet engineering standards on top of which the new transportation alternatives are needed in the growing areas surrounding where the bridge connects Westchester and Rockland counties.
Obviously the biggest questions surrounding yesterday's announcement were about the cost with a state majorly strapped for funds and Wall Street in a state of crisis. On top of potential private financing, the state will look for federal assistance in building the bridge. One Westchester assemblyman called the talk of private financing "the Trojan horse" of yesterday's press conference, saying, "Someone needs to tell me why we need to sell this bridge and let the Wall Street guys run it."
Photo by th.omas on flickr
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Explain to me how it would cost 16 billion dollars to construct a new bridge? $16,000,000,000.00! Un- believable. The I-35W Bridge over the Mississippi River was rebuilt in 11 months for 235 million dollars. Maybe we should import, house and pay the men and women from this project to work on ours. It would cost a lot less....
Things are more expensive in NY and it's much more complicated to build a bridge over a river as large as the Hudson versus the tiny little river the I35W bridge runs over. The new Tappan Zee will probably be a cable-stayed or suspension bridge, which is much more complicated to build than a simple truss bridge as well.
I think it's a great idea. Connecting Metro North with the Western side of the Hudson is something that's going to have to happen sooner or later.
The I-35W bridge is 1,900 ft long. The Tappan Zee bridge is 16,000 ft long.
Explain to me how it would cost 16 billion dollars to construct a new bridge?
From the New York Times article:
"Officials said the bridge itself would cost $6.4 billion. A high-speed bus corridor running from Suffern to Port Chester would cost $2.9 billion. And it would cost an additional $6.7 billion to build a new rail line that would go from the Metro-North station in Suffern and across the bridge, connecting with Metro-North’s Hudson Line south of Tarrytown."
Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if by the time this is done in about 2030 they have spent $35 billion.
16 billion, or as it's called on Wall Street -- beer money.
Six bil here, eight bil there, another ten bil there, before you know it you are talking real money.
Sounds like a lot of jobs will be created, hopefully we will be out of this latest great depression by then.
After almost a decade of one study after another they finally realize a new bridge is needed!?
With the way things get build in NYS I highly doubt the bridge will be done by 2016 unless a sport stadium is being build then projects get down on time.
I wonder how many more trains Metro North will be able to fit on the Hudson Line, since there is usually a bottleneck during the rush hour right before Spuyten Duyvil where it goes from 4 tracks to 3.
Have Santiago Calatrava design it so we can enjoy the first Trillion Dollar Bridge.
None of this means a thing. This will go down in the Book of Lost Dreams just as the MTA's wish list of a capital budget and the Port Authority's vision of ground zero are now sinking under mountains of debt and shrinking revenue. Twenty years from now we'll be laughing about this as we watch the current Tappan Zee Bridge being repainted for the 17th time.
"One Westchester assemblyman called the talk of private financing "the Trojan horse" of yesterday's press conference, saying, "Someone needs to tell me why we need to sell this bridge and let the Wall Street guys run it."
Uh, because politicians and bureaucrats fuck things up? (Exhibit A: Ground Zero)
The Brooklyn Bridge and the New York City subway system were built with "private financing" and they seem to have worked out okay.
@TSOL
"Uh, because politicians and bureaucrats fuck things up? (Exhibit A: Ground Zero)"
Ummm, then you'll have to explain to me why I'm having to pony up $700 billion. (Exhibit B: The mess we're in now)
They'd better do something before that thing plunges all the commuters into the Hudson. It needs to be bigger.