New York Officials Weigh Options for Old Tappan Zee Bridge

Amid uncertainty over the cost of building a new Tappan Zee Bridge, New York State officials are floating creative ideas about what to do with the current span after it is replaced.

Officials Wednesday raised the option of turning the three-mile bridge across the Hudson River between Westchester and Rockland counties into a pedestrian walkway.

“It’s an exciting option,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during a meeting of cabinet officials that included an update on the bridge project from Thomas Madison, the new executive director of the New York State Thruway. Cuomo said tearing down the bridge alone would cost $150 million.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Mitchell Moss, the director of New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management, said of the walkway proposal. “It would be a great way to create an attraction.”

Madison, a former state and federal highway administrator and most recently, the vice president at infrastructure firm STV Inc., said construction contracts would be awarded later this year, with some work possibly beginning by year’s end.

He also said the estimated $5.2 billion cost could sway in either direction.

Earlier this month, the Thruway Authority filed a letter of interest in a $2 billion loan with the Federal Highway Administration under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. A TIFIA loan could help reduce overall borrowing costs and potential toll increases.

In October, President Obama approved the state’s request to fast-track the approval process to replace the 57-year-old bridge, which now carries about 135,000 vehicles daily.

The bridge, 15 miles north of New York City, is showing its age. With seven narrow lanes and no safety shoulders, its accident rate is double that of the rest of the Thruway system, according to state officials.

Mass transit advocates favor a rail line on the new bridge. Cuomo said that while the bridge will be built with that option, neither Westchester nor Rockland counties have the infrastructure for now.

The walkway, if it materializes, could parallel an existing one 45 miles upstate that connects Poughkeepsie and Highland. That crossing, called Walkway Over the Hudson, opened in 2009 on the site of a railroad bridge built in 1888 that closed in 1974 after a fire.

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Transportation industry New York
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