Politicians and construction-industry leaders last week made much hoopla when they announced that work on the James A. Farley Bridge is just around the corner; the Route 9W span will close this spring, be demolished and replaced, all in time to handle the bulk of eastern Rockland’s north-south truck traffic by November. (See news story here.) To construction industry leaders, the Farley Bridge is a symbol of New York’s aging infrastructure and the need to invest more money in repairs — and create more jobs. But it’s also an symbol of opportunities lost in the tortuous process in New York that spans the time between identifying a building need and actually starting work.
The state Department of Transportation will tear down the 86-year-old span traversing the Cedar Brook Pond and build anew, with cars, school buses and heavy trucks rerouted around local streets during the construction, causing traffic headaches for months on end.
That wasn’t the plan a couple years ago, when DOT met with Stony Pointers to come up with a well-thought-out replacement that minimized traffic headaches and landtaking around the downtown. After public hearings and other community outreach in 2007, DOT scaled back original plans for the bridge to keep with the “feel” of the town, and included improvements for the 9W-Main Street intersection. Staged construction would bring a new bridge span east of the original, and traffic could be diverted to it as the old bridge was torn down and rebuilt. That would keep traffic flowing along Route 9W.
But several yellow flags and one red flag later, signaling serious structural troubles on the deck-truss span, those plans went out the window. For good reason — the Minnesota bridge that collapsed in 2007 was of deck-truss construction, and spurred the heavier scrutiny of Farley and similarly constructed bridge in the state. After corrosion problems were found underneath the Farley Bridge, the major truck artery was made off-limits to heavy vehicles. The rerouting of trucks, school buses and other heavy vehicles over the summer caused headaches, and the super-heavy Tilcon trucks still have to use sidestreets to get to and from the company’s Tomkins Cove quarry.
So last week, politicians and construction industry folk pointed to the infrastructure boost and jobs gain this project will bring. They used it to call for more state infrastructure investment to supplement federal stimulus money — even though DOT skipped applying for such funding, concerned about any further delays if the stimulus bill got mired on Congress.
But, they should also pay attention to what’s been lost — a replacement plan that maximized community support and minimized downtown traffic disruption.