The bike and pedestrian path on the Goethals Bridge between New Jersey and Staten Island will finally be open all day, every day, starting on Earth Day on April 22, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced.
The bridge linking the Rock to Elizabeth, New Jersey, is currently inaccessible to people not in cars between midnight and 6 a.m., similar to the Port Authority's George Washington Bridge, which the agency keeps locked up for non-drivers between midnight and 5 a.m.
Commuters cheered the expanded hours while calling on the bi-state agency to undo its prejudice against people who don't want to use cars on the much busier span uptown so that more interstate travelers can choose better transportation modes than the private car.
"Best news I’ve had all year," said Shayan Behnman, who lives on the Jersey side of the Goethals Bridge commutes to Manhattan daily. "This is going to boost numbers for sure.
"They should just open them all across the board," he added.
Until recently, Behnman regularly rode his e-scooter over the bridge because it was a quicker and free way to get to work at a construction site on the East Side of Manhattan. He said he needed to hop the fence and use the path earlier than its 5 a.m. opening time to make the Staten Island Ferry in time to get to work in the Big Apple by 7 a.m.
Some of the Port Authority's security guards also opened the gates half an hour late, Behnman said, making it unreliable, even if he followed the rules.
That came to a halt when a cop stopped Behnman for riding the path one morning recently. He posted a video of the experience online, showing him trying to make his case to the officer that he was just trying to get to work in the City that Allegedly Never Sleeps.
"This is Elizabeth," the cop countered to Behnman.
The policeman let Behnman go since the bridge eventually opened, but after the run-in with the law, the Garden State resident switched back to driving, paying the bridge tolls and the congestion pricing fee to enter downtown Manhattan, rather than risk arrest.
"It’s faster for me to take the scooter, and it’s just better on all fronts," he told Streetsblog. "Just the fact that I can’t go over the bridge at a certain time was annoying to me."
Behnman has since taken his video down, telling Streetsblog that he achieved his goal of opening the path full-time he didn't want to draw any more attention to himself or the police officer.
The Port Authority initially opened the 10-foot path on the Goethals in 2020 after a $1.5-billion reconstruction project of the connector over the Arthur Kill. The shared path logged 22,000 annual trips showing a "strong demand," according to officials.
"It’s a perfect reminder that infrastructure can be both functional and green. Opening this path 24-7 furthers our commitment to providing sustainable, accessible options for our communities," said Nicholas Simeonidis, general manager of Staten Island Bridges for the Port Authority, in an announcement last week.
The George Washington Bridge remains the only one of the Port Authority's connectors with a nightly lockup on its shared path. The third one, the Bayonne Bridge between New Jersey and Staten Island, has a 24-7 shared path.
Other bi-state travelers hope the PA will finally end its nocturnal lockdown of the George Washington, especially given the agency recently renovated it with a wider entrance in 2023.
"That is our bridge, if cars can go over it, we should be able to go over it," said Kacy Knight, a volunteer firefighter and civic leader based in Fort Lee. "Some bureaucrat shouldn’t arbitrarily decide which time we can go and which we can’t. It’s just not fair."
The massive double-decker span logs around 695,000 trips on its shoulder path each year, including 391,000 cyclists and 305,000 pedestrians, according to the authority. That's nearly 32 times as many as the Goethals and more than six times as busy as the Bayonne Bridge, which counts about 117,000 trips a year, including 26,000 cyclists and 91,000 pedestrians.
Last year, Knight launched a petition to open the northern path around-the-clock, but the Authority has given various reasons for blocking access at night, including to accommodate a construction project on the south walk or regular cleaning and maintenance, Gothamist reported.
A spokesperson said the Port Authority would be open to opening the path once the south path reopens, which is part of a restoration of the bridge.
"We are currently undertaking a $2 billion restoration of the George Washington Bridge, during which time overnight closures are necessary," the spokesperson, Seth Stein, said in a statement. "When that work is complete and the south walk reopens, we look forward to continuing the conversation about overnight closures, with an eye to ensuring we can still perform essential maintenance and cleaning operations while keeping people safe on the bridge."
