Three of us from The Journal News were in Tarrytown yesterday for a 3:15 p.m. Department of Transportation press briefing on changes in the process that will determine the future of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
The news, boiled down to basics, is that we’ll know in May what kind of mass transit is proposed for a Hudson River crossing and a new timetable for the overall project should save money, increase public input and assure a proper, detailed environmental study of the mass transit mode selected.
It’s pretty important stuff, but we learned about it totally by accident when Khurram Saeed, who covers transportation, called one of the agencies that is a partner in the Tappan Zee Bridge project. He was calling about an unrelated story and was asked if he planned to be at the briefing later in the day.
He alerted me and off we went.
We left our office less than 30 minutes ahead of the briefing, never receiving a press release that was supposed to have been e-mailed by 2 p.m.
When we arrived at the Department of Transportation’s new offices in Tarrytown, no one was ready for the press to be there.
Lucky for them it was just the three of us and WNBC-TV reporter Dianna Russini, formerly of News 12, and a cameraman.
Russini was reading a press release and when I asked for one, it set off a scurry of activity. Seems she had the only copy—or at least the only copy anyone was giving up.
There seemed to be some confusion about how and who would download more.
After about 20 minutes—during which time we passed around Dianna’s copy—we got our own.
There didn’t seem to be a DOT press person in charge and it only got worse.
Once a briefing for members of the Rockland and Westchester Tappan Zee Bridge Task Force ended—way past the scheduled 3:15 p.m. start of our briefing—we learned there would be no formal briefing, just an opportunity to speak with Tappan Zee Bridge Study Team leader Michael Anderson of the DOT.
We got a few minutes with him, but then were told he was late for another briefing, with officials like Assembly members Ken Zebrowski and Ellen Jaffee. Jaffee, too, had some trouble getting a copy of the press release.
We were given a few minutes more with Anderson, but didn’t have the opportunity for the kind of conversation where we could really explore minor details like who will actually pick the transit mode that gets intense scrutiny.
At one point, one of the DOT staffers who was running around mentioned getting us a press kit. If there was one, we never got it.
Anderson said over and over that the changes in the project timetable to allow more public involvement were meant to make the process more transparent.
If that’s the case, they got off to a lousy start yesterday.
The confusion made it clear they didn’t expect the press to be there and probably didn’t want us to be there.
It meant that two news outlets—The Journal News and WNBC-TV—got an exclusive.
That’s a win for us, but even we’d see that as a loss for the public, who will eventually get the bill for billions of dollars.