So, here we are, on May 28, three days left in the month, and no big announcement by the Tappan Zee Bridge/Interstate 287 Project Team on its “preferred alternative” plans for the 30-mile corridor that stretches from Suffern to Port Chester. The Department of Transportation-led team had planned to announce its favored mass transit component for the highway overhaul by the end of May. That would be Saturday. That announcement would include what was planned for the Tappan Zee Bridge, from replacing it to adding on to it to building it a buddy-bridge to rehabbing it. Big stuff.

But we won’t hear this month.

I checked on the status of the big announcement with Yvette Hines, deputy director of outreach and community development for the New York State Department of Transportation (or as she said, “DOT spokesman is fine”). She said a few weeks, or the next several weeks. That would mean June? Hines talked about all the variables, including updated financial forecasting and reviewing the impact of the Access to the Region’s Core, or ARC tunnel, that will bring NJTransit trains directly to the West Side.

She also pointed to the hundreds of comments that the Project Team received before the March 31 public comment period closed. Hines said the comments were intricate, with many ideas and angles included in most of the submissions. “We have a sophisticated stakeholder base,” she said. “If someone takes the time to write a 10-page comment,” she noted, that needs to get attention. Each comment, she said, “we consider and address.”

So, we’ll hear all about it in June—after all, the month has four full weeks and two days. Guess I should add a voiceover to our video editorial, “The Road Ahead,” that discusses the plans for the TZ/I-287 corridor and the region’s future transportation needs. Or, just pretend you hear “some time in June” rather than “in late May.”