[Hudson11]

In TZB Replacement, Location adds to cost - New York Times
Sam Roberts December 17, 2012

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...an-zee-bridge/

If this were a docudrama, it might be called “A Bridge Too Far.” If it were a television game show, it would be “The $4 Billion Question.” Instead, it’s a timely real-life, stranger-than-fiction answer to a decades-old anomaly: Why did New York State build the Tappan Zee Bridge at one of the wider points on the Hudson River?

The question is more than a mere historical footnote. It is integral to why the planned replacement for the decrepit 56-year-old span that connects Westchester and Rockland Counties is expected to cost more than $4 billion and why visionary state officials are now stuck with what may seem like a short-sighted political decision made a half century ago.

[...]

Building a replacement bridge or tunnel further south where the river narrows was not considered a practical option for two reasons.

First, it would leave the existing two links of the New York State Thruway, in Tarrytown and South Nyack, dangling fecklessly at the shoreline.

And, second, it might prompt a jurisdictional dispute with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — just the sort of conflict that resulted in the original decision by Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, to build the bridge at Tarrytown, the river’s second widest spot after nearby Haverstraw Bay.

Obviously the first problem is the reason that this bridge absolutely must be in this location.