The Romita Auditorium at Iona College’s Ryan Library was largely empty last Thursday for a community meeting organized by Governor Cuomo’s Tappan Zee Bridge team. Former News 12 anchor Brian Conybeare now Special Advisor to the Governor for the New Tappan Zee Bridge emceed the event. Robert Conway, Senior Vice President of AKRF Enviornmental Planning and Engineering Consultants joined Conybeare on the panel.
The slide presentation can be viewed here.
Less than 20 people were in the auditorium but most were either part of the Tappan Zee Bridge team, local government officials or press. Mayor Noam Bramson, City Council Member Ivar Hyden, DPW Commissioner Alex Turgis and City Engineer John Clemente from the New Rochelle City government attended. Journalists from Talk of the Sound, Daily Voice, Journal News and News 12 were there. Also on hand were a few Iona College employees.
As far as the general public, there appears to have been three people, all three of whom asked questions.
John Karl asked about the requisition process. Noam Bramson asked whether a mass transit option would ever happen. John Clemente asked about the process for selecting the companies that bid on the job. One woman who has been going to many TZB community meeting asked about a community advisory board. A man asked a somewhat confused question which was more of a statement. There was some discussion about diversion of traffic from the George Washington Bridge.
The lack of interest should not be a surprise. The event was scheduled in mid-August with little fanfare and few New Rochelle residents are directly impacted by the bridge issue.
For a calendar of future Tappan Zee Bridge events click here.
EDITORIAL COMMENT:
As I watched I noted a few interesting facts in the slide presentation:
- $750 million has been spent on the bridge over the past 10 years.
- 138,000 vehicles cross the bridge every day which is far more than it was designed to handle.
- GWB E-Z Pass Peak price for a car is $9.50 a day or $12 cash.
- TZB E-Z Pass Peak price for a car is $3.00 a day or $5 cash.
- Raising the toll on the new bridge to $14.00 would cause significant diversion of traffic from Rockland County to the George Washington Bridge because the TZB toll is much lower than the GWB toll.
- Building a mass transit-ready bridge will cost $5 billion dollars.
- Building a mass transit-ready bridge will create 45,000 new jobs.
These data points and others were used to justify building the new bridge.
Here are my thoughts on this data.
1) If the maintenance of the bridge is costing $75 million a year that means that for $5 billion the New York State Thruway Authority could maintain the bridge for 67 years. The federal government is already broke. Is this the time to ask the feds to borrow more money from China to finance a bridge that is “nice to have” but certainly not “must have”?
2) if the bridge has too much traffic, and a good chunk of that traffic is Rockland County residents bypassing the GWB to get into Manhattan on work days, then why not just raise the price to use the TZB. That is part of the plan after the bridge is built so why not do it now. What would happen to the amount of traffic on the bridge if the toll was raised to a price more in line with the GWB. Either the traffic would go down or the toll revenue would go up. The bridge would either require less maintenance or there would be more money to maintain it.
3) If spending $5 billion on a bridge will create 45,000 new jobs then why not spend $10 billion and create 90,000 jobs? Why stop there? Why not spent $50 billion and create 450,000 new jobs. This reminds me of the spoons and shovels story attributed to Milton Freidman.
At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
Should a new Tappan Zee Bridge be built? Yes or No and Why?