Will the new Tappan Zee get built before the old one falls down? Reading the news and blogs, you’d think no. A dispute between Gov. Cuomo (a Democrat) and Westchester County Exec Rob Astorino (a Republican) could imperil the project — except that it won’t.
It’s a spat about nothing.
“County executives want info, leave Tappan Zee Bridge fate unclear,” blared the Hudson Valley’s Journal-News.
On Tuesday, Astorino and his Rockland County counterpart, Scott Vanderhoef (another Republican), said they’d withhold their “yes” votes for the project.
The county execs want Cuomo to commit to running fast-bus service through their counties and over the bridge. Buses would have their own lanes to speed them up, like on Second Avenue.
But the governor says it would cost $5 billion to build a good bus system — nearly double the bridge cost. Plus, it would require a new environmental review, delaying the project for more years.
No buses — so no bridge.
Except that it’s not that hard. It’s a dispute about the definition of what rapid bus service means. Cuomo gets the $5 billion figure from studies done going back nearly a decade.
A succession of governors from George Pataki to David Paterson weren’t serious about getting the bridge built. So they let engineers and advocates throw everything — including a unicorn taking a bath in a gold-plated kitchen sink — into fantasy blueprints.
As the Tri-State Transportation Campaign points out, the original documents included everything from new “climbing lanes” to interchanges going out 30 miles around the bridge — plus 22 bus stations.
This would be as if you’d asked someone how much it would cost to paint a bedroom — and were told you needed to build a house made of diamonds.
The county execs say the state can bootstrap bus service for much cheaper, less than a fifth the old price.
How? The state could commit to dedicated bus lanes on the bridge, then slowly make space to extend the bus-only lanes on the highways, going three miles out from the bridge at first.
As for building stations, start with bus service at the Tarrytown and White Plains Metro North stations to assess demand.
Guess what? Responding to county squawking, Cuomo has committed to bus lanes on the bridge, at least during rush hour. Inevitably, enough voter pressure will push him toward the rest.
Already, Vanderhoef is on board, saying Wednesday that he’s satisfied that Cuomo likes buses enough to go ahead.
That’s all anyone needs for now. The buses won’t be running on a new bridge for a good five years — plenty of time to figure out the rest.
One for-later question: Who will pay for the regular operating cost of these buses? MTA service doesn’t pay for itself. The transit system of advocates’ dreams would need tens of millions a year in subsidies; do we send tolls up more to cover that? Rockland already balks at paying taxes to fund the MTA.
Astorino wants to try to get private-sector competition to beat MTA costs. A good idea — but we won’t know ’til we try it. (And the unions will try to prevent any such large-scale experiment.)
Megaprojects take so long to plan and build — and cost so much — because everyone wants to figure everything out in advance, and things change.
To wit: When Pataki announced his plan for a new TZB in 2000, the idea of a system that could allow cars in bus lanes or not, depending on up-to-the-minute sensors’ signals was still futuristic.
And buses were still more for poorer people. Today, some of the young, wealthier people that suburbs desire prefer not to drive every day.
With buses, the state can experiment — no need to shell out to rebuild an entire highway now. The important thing is not to preclude bus service by building a too-narrow bridge.
That’s what planners did on New York roads last century, and it’s what keeps Long Island from growing and what keeps Gotham from having good transportation to its airports.
No one is proposing that.
It’s nice to solve an easy problem — really a non-problem.
But the bridge project still faces one major problem as bids from builders come in late this month: how to pay for it. There’s no “compromise” that can print money.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor with the Manhattan Institute’s
City Journal.