Goodbye, Goethals.
The Port Authority yesterday OK’d a $1.5 billion contract to replace the 85-year-old span between Staten Island and New Jersey with a spiffy new pair of cable-stayed bridges.
Construction will begin later this year, and the bridges will take their first traffic in late 2016, the PA says. Agency officials called the plan “historic” because they’ll be the first new PA spans since the George Washington Bridge opened in 1931.
The bridges should speed traffic by offering three vehicle lanes in each direction, compared to two lanes in each direction on the current bridge.