[NYguy]

The bridge the Port Authority is building looks very similar...


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/s...PAIkYBb5Z0rBrK

Port Authority approves $1.5B contract to replace Goethals Bridge





By BILL SANDERSON
April 24, 2013

The Port Authority today approved a $1.5 billion contract to replace the creaking 85-year-old Goethals Bridge between Staten Island and New Jersey with a spiffy new pair of cable-stayed structures.

Construction will begin later this year, the bridges will take their first traffic in late 2016, and will be fully completed by 2017, the Port Authority says.

Agency officials the plan “historic” — because it’s the first new Port Authority span since the George Washington Bridge opened in 1931, and because the contractor will maintain and operate the bridges for 40 years. It’s also expected to boost to the construction industry with 2,250 new jobs.

The bridge should speed traffic by offering three vehicle lanes in each direction, compared to two lanes in each direction on the current bridge.

The bridges, expected to last 100 years, will also include a bicycling and pedestrian path, and will “include options for mass transit in the future,” the Port Authority says.

Once the new bridges are finished, workers will tear down the old Goethals Bridge, a steel cantilever span that cost just $7.2 million to build in the 1920s.

Also today, the Port Authority OK’d a $743.3 million contract to raise the deck of the Bayonne Bridge by 64 feet, to make room for bigger ships calling at the Port of Newark.

The Goethals project is the second big bridge replacement in the area. Dredging work is expected to start later this year on a new $3.9 billion Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson River.