Bridges

The Cuomo administration keeps finding obstacles to Tappan Zee Bridge transit that don't exist. Chief among them is a phony $5 billion price tag, but there are others as well.

Up to now, the Cuomo administration hasn't shown a great regard for public input when it comes to the new Tappan Zee Bridge. The administration dismissed five stakeholder advisory groups, which had been set up to let interested parties dig deep into the details of the project, and shuttered the public outreach offices located on each side of the Hudson.

Earlier this week, Streetsblog reported that Governor Andrew Cuomo is dishonestly overstating the cost of building Tappan Zee Bridge transit. Cuomo has repeatedly said that building a 30-mile bus rapid transit system would cost $5 billion, and that the state can't afford to spend that much. But that number is inflated by the inclusion of billions of dollars in highway improvements, like new climbing lanes for trucks, many of which are entirely unrelated to providing transit.

At the beginning of the week, Governor Andrew Cuomo launched a media offensive to defend his decision to halt all work on building new transit infrastructure across the Tappan Zee Bridge. "The bus system would roughly double the cost of the bridge," Cuomo told radio host Fred Dicker.

Faced with a crucial vote that could have set federal funding in motion for the Cuomo administration's transit-less Tappan Zee Bridge replacement, three county leaders have asked for more information before signing off on the project.

After reporting yesterday that the Westchester and Rockland county executives have the power to put the brakes on Governor Andrew Cuomo's plans for a new Tappan Zee Bridge built without transit, Streetsblog received an email from Cuomo spokesperson Matt Wing. Wing, who has in the past told us that we were not to contact the governor's office for Tappan Zee questions, but send them instead to the Thruway Authority, complained that we hadn't reached out to him and insisted that we include this statement:

County Executives Rob Astorino and C. Scott Vanderhoef have been two of the most consistent and vocal advocates of restoring transit to the plans for a new Tappan Zee Bridge. They have understood that Westchester and Rockland County commuters need a way to travel east-west without a car and need congestion relief on crowded I-287.

The Cuomo administration plans to select a team to build the new Tappan Zee Bridge this summer and begin construction this year. So it's about time for the governor to say how he plans to pay for the bridge, right?

The Cuomo administration has not released basic information about its plans for a new Tappan Zee Bridge that should have been made public under New York's freedom of information laws, say leading transportation and environmental advocates. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the conservation group Riverkeeper say it's one way that the Cuomo administration has short-circuited the public process in its rush to build the bridge.