A Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official reassured New Jersey lawmakers yesterday that the agency is moving quickly to update or replace the Bayonne Bridge, a move that would potentially increase shipping activity in the area.
Deputy executive Bill Baroni also announced that the authority received 12 responses from developers in a request for information solicitation to design, build, finance, and maintain a bridge to replace the Goethals Bridge, which opened to traffic in 1928. It connects Elizabeth, N.J., and Staten Island.
The Goethals’ financing proposal involves the Port Authority operating and controlling tolling on the bridge. A private contractor would raise the needed capital and then lend those funds to the agency, which it would repay over time, with interest.
“We don’t have the money to replace the Goethals Bridge, so we went into the market and asked if there was anybody in the private sector — and in other countries they do this — who would be willing to partner with the Port Authority for something called a design, build, finance, and maintain bridge project,” Baroni said yesterday before the Assembly Transportation, Public Works, and Independent Authorities Committee. “It is not a privatization project … We run the tolls, we run the bridge, we maintain it, it’s ours. It is a financing mechanism.”
Narrow lanes, a lack of emergency shoulders, and a high number of accidents make the Goethals Bridge obsolete.
“Twelve separate private-sector companies expressed interest in partnering with the Port Authority to work with us to design, build, finance, and maintain” the new bridge and the keep control of the tolls in the hands of the Port Authority, Baroni said. “Largely because the Port Authority has 80 or 90 years of reputation in transportation, that we’re not a fly-by-night agency, that we’re committed to transportation in our region.”
Along with replacing the Goethals Bridge, the agency is focused on either renovating the Bayonne Bridge or replacing the span. In order to capture new shipping business that is expected to result from an expansion of the Panama Canal, the Port Authority must increase the bridge’s clearance above the water to accommodate the larger vessels that will have new access to the East Coast.
Currently, larger ships that cannot pass through the Panama Canal mainly travel between Asia and western North America. The canal’s expansion project is scheduled to be complete in 2014, with additional ships then accessing the East Coast. Officials in the New York and New Jersey region want the Port of Newark and the Port of Elizabeth to grab that new shipping business rather than those vessels unloading in Norfolk, Va., or Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada.
The bridge, which connects Bayonne, N.J., to Staten Island, has a channel clearance of 151 feet. Officials did not discuss financing options during yesterday’s meeting. A 2008 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report pegged the cost of rehabilitating or replacing the span at $1.3 billion to $3.1 billion.
“How do we get this done fastest with an eye on costs? There is no other issue in the four months that I’ve been on this job that I have addressed every day other than the Bayonne Bridge,” Baroni said. “We have so many stakeholders in this.”
The ports in Newark and Elizabeth employ roughly 200,000 workers, and generate $9 billion of personal income in the region and $4 billion of tax revenue.
The Port Authority next week will release a request for proposals for environmental consulting services, Baroni said. The agency will use an environmental adviser to assist it with completing an environmental impact statement, which the agency will need to submit to the federal government.
In addition, Baroni said the authority has already begun reviewing different renovation options and also the possibility of constructing a new span, economic impacts to the region, and traffic concerns.
“We are moving in such an expedited fashion,” he said. “It’s unique to the Port Authority, never mind anybody else. We understand the time sensitivity.”
