Five reasons why the Tappan Zee sprawl should be stopped

As I've discussed before, the Tappan Zee Bridge is a sprawl-generating machine. The sprawl created by this bridge in Orange, Rockland, Bergen and Westchester counties is bad for everyone in the area. Here are five reasons why:

1. Sprawl puts teens, seniors, the poor and the disabled at a disadvantage.
2. Sprawl increases the pressure for hydrofracking.
3. Sprawl keeps Nyack, Suffern and the other towns from being Strong Towns with sustainable budgets.
4. Sprawl adds to pollution
   
5. Sprawl kills.
   

And if you think it's bad now, it will be hell when oil (and shale gas, and electricity) becomes really expensive. Please don't use this post to support an argument for "a new bridge with transit." The bridge we have keeps generating sprawl. Any replacement would generate at least as much sprawl, with or without "transit."

Five things we can do without rebuilding the Tappan Zee Bridge

A lot of the arguments given for replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge present something that we want, or maybe even need, and then offer the bridge as a way of getting that. The dishonesty is that the bridge isn't the only way of getting these things. Here are five examples.

1. We don't need a new bridge to create jobs. Almost any increase in government spending will put more people to work. Transit projects put more people to work than road projects, so let's spend all the money on transit.
2. We don't need a new bridge to improve mobility in the region. A wider bridge may help people to move at first, but it will soon be full of cars, and then when the tolls and the price of gas rise, no one will be able to afford to drive across it.
3. We don't need a new bridge to reduce crashes. The Governor could reduce the crashes tomorrow by getting rid of the seventh lane on the existing bridge. He hasn't, because the politicians have all decided that squeezing a few thousand more cars in is worth the deaths and injuries, and the people don't seem to care.
4. We don't need a new bridge to accommodate an increase in population. The population is not going to increase according to the moronic linear projections put out by the State DOT. Any added population can be served by more train and bus service.
5. We don't need a new bridge to build a new linear park. We could build a linear park tomorrow by getting rid of a few lanes on the existing bridge, but the politicians have all decided that squeezing a few thousand more cars in is more important than a park, and the people don't seem to care.

The Tappan Zee Bridge and Transit: A look back

This December 15 will be the hundredth anniversary of the completion of the first Tappan Zee Bridge in 1955. In honor of that occasion, we've collected some highlights of the history of the original bridge and its current replacement.

The Andrew Cuomo Tappan Zee Bridge today. Photo: Wikipedia.

1953: The first concrete caisson is floated into place.

1955: Governor Averell Harriman opens the bridge to traffic.

1970: The Thruway Authority repays the last of its $80 million debt to New York State.

1993: A movable barrier system allows four lanes of traffic to flow in the peak direction.

1999: The I-287 Task Force is formed to explore options to rehabilitate or replace the bridge.

2011: President Barack Obama announces that the replacement of the bridge will be expedited.

2012: Governor Andrew Cuomo announces a deal to include "full corridor Bus Rapid Transit" on the bridge instead of an "emergency access lane."

2017: Governor Richard Brodsky opens the new north span of the bridge to traffic.

2023: Tappan Zee, Inc., raises car tolls from $10 to $15 round trip to make payments on the bridge construction bonds. Gasoline-powered cars are charged $20, but most people drive electric cars using cheap electricity from shale gas.

2027: Governor Eric Ulrich opens the new south span of the bridge to traffic.

2028: Bowing to political pressure, Governor Ulrich opens the "BRT lane" to all cars.

2032: The Historic Tarrytown Village is moved to a parking pedestal in Elmsford to make room for the Tarrytown Water Filtration Plant and the Residences at Sleepye Hollowe.

2038: Bowing to political pressure, Governor Cara Cuomo-Espada opens the bridge shoulders to all cars.

2040: Tappan Zee Shale Gas, Inc. assumes control of New York State for nonpayment of obligations. Car tolls are raised to $25 round trip.

2048: Bowing to political pressure, TZSG President Theodore Gillibrand converts the "little used bicycle/pedestrian path" to a reversible lane. The bridge has to have seven lanes in the peak direction, he argues, because the Thruway is that wide.

2049: The Andrew Cuomo Tappan Zee Task Force is formed to explore options to rehabilitate or replace the bridge.

2054: The Historic Village of Nyack is moved to a parking pedestal in Nanuet to make room for the Nyack Biomass Plant and the Residences at Nyacke.

Note: the previous post envisioned a Tappan Zee without transit, as currently planned.

100 Years of the Tappan Zee Bridge: A Look Back

This December 15 will be the hundredth anniversary of the completion of the first Tappan Zee Bridge in 1955. In honor of that occasion, we've collected some highlights of the history of the original bridge and its current replacement.

The Andrew Cuomo Tappan Zee Bridge today. Photo: Wikipedia.

1953: The first concrete caisson is floated into place.

1955: Governor Averell Harriman opens the bridge to traffic.

1970: The Thruway Authority repays the last of its $80 million debt to New York State.

1993: A movable barrier system allows four lanes of traffic to flow in the peak direction.

1999: The I-287 Task Force is formed to explore options to rehabilitate or replace the bridge.

2011: President Barack Obama announces that the replacement of the bridge will be expedited.

2017: Governor Richard Brodsky opens the new north span of the bridge to traffic.

2023: Tappan Zee, Inc., raises car tolls from $10 to $15 round trip to make payments on the bridge construction bonds. Gasoline-powered cars are charged $20, but most people drive electric cars using cheap electricity from shale gas.

2027: Governor Eric Ulrich opens the new south span of the bridge to traffic.

2028: Bowing to political pressure, Governor Ulrich opens the "emergency access lane" to all cars.

2032: The Historic Tarrytown Village is moved to a parking pedestal in Elmsford to make room for the Tarrytown Water Filtration Plant and the Residences at Sleepye Hollowe.

2038: Bowing to political pressure, Governor Cara Cuomo-Espada opens the bridge shoulders to all cars.

2040: Tappan Zee Shale Gas, Inc. assumes control of New York State for nonpayment of obligations. Car tolls are raised to $25 round trip.

2048: Bowing to political pressure, TZSG President Theodore Gillibrand converts the "little used bicycle/pedestrian path" to a reversible lane. The bridge has to have seven lanes in the peak direction, he argues, because the Thruway is that wide.

2049: The Andrew Cuomo Tappan Zee Task Force is formed to explore options to rehabilitate or replace the bridge.

2054: The Historic Village of Nyack is moved to a parking pedestal in Nanuet to make room for the Nyack Biomass Plant and the Residences at Nyacke.

Will the Applied Sciences campus be car-free?

One of the biggest stories in the news this week is the announcement that the City of New York will give a hundred million dollars and a chunk of Roosevelt Island to a consortium of Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build an Applied Sciences campus. The establishment of a new technical institute in the heart of the city can be thought of as another victory in the resurgence of urbanism over job sprawl. But how urban will it be?

University study has traditionally been an urban practice, whether at Bologna, Paris, Harvard or Chicago. There has been another educational tradition of rural cloistering leading in the U.S. to the college town, a small town dominated by one college or several. Ithaca, the home of Cornell's main campus as well as Ithaca College, is one such college town. In the second half of the twentieth century, many small-town and suburban campuses sprawled, inviting students, faculty and staff to drive in and turning most of the space between buildings into parking lots. Even in those campuses, most of the students and significant numbers of faculty arrive on foot, by bike or by transit, leading to very high transit mode shares, but often a small minority of administrators, faculty and staff insist on driving and on having their parking dominate the campus.

This college sprawl has been one part of the general sprawling of America, along with job sprawl, housing sprawl and shopping sprawl. This trend is not sustainable, and there are signs it is losing steam. Sarah Goodyear has chronicled attempts by corporations like Facebook and Apple to make their campuses more urban, but they remain isolated along their suburban collector roads, and Sarah concludes, "Maybe they will be happy in their custom-made, self-contained bubbles. Or maybe down the road, they'll be like one-time innovative giants such as Sears -- looking longingly toward downtown."

The Applied Sciences campus is part of Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Steel's strategy to make New York the downtown competitor, the target of those longing gazes, and it just may work. Roosevelt Island seems isolated, and Eric Jaffe thinks that it will need transportation upgrades, but I can't really see what needs upgrading.

With no improvements the entire campus will already be within a ten minute walk of the aerial tram and F subway line to Manhattan. Like the R train, which the Daily News dubbed the "Silicon Subway," the F runs through Midtown, Soho and Downtown Brooklyn, connecting a number of start-up companies. An Applied Sciences student or faculty member could be at the Housing Works Bookstore for coffee with a corporate researcher in half an hour, door to door, and a staff member from MakerBot Industries in Brooklyn could take the D to the F and be at a seminar on Roosevelt Island in 45 minutes. With the city's planned bike share, Court Square in Long Island City is only twenty minutes away.

The proposed bike/pedestrian bridge to Manhattan could be cool. The old way to get to the island was by trolley to an elevator on the middle of the Queensboro Bridge, and rebuilding that would be nice as well. But neither of those are urgent.

Stephen Smith points out that the city could probably get people to build a tech campus for free just by raising height limits and removing minimum parking requirements in transit-connected areas. On Twitter, he also opined that "Cornell's Roosevelt Island plan is basically a few bldgs hidden beneath solar panels in a quasi-Corbusian urban form." It's a very appropriate criticism. The oldest residential buildings on Roosevelt Island are at least clustered around Main Street, which feels very urban, but the newer buildings built in the past twenty years break the grid and force pedestrians to make odd detours. Why did the designers of the Cornell-Technion plan feel the need to propose something even less urban?

My main concern is for Roosevelt Island to remain as car-free as it has been, and maybe even become more so. The original plan for the island's current developments was to have all the cars parked at the Motorgate garage, and the rest of the island be nearly car-free - they don't even have garbage trucks. Sadly, over the years, everyone with a little bit of power has decided that they're too good, or maybe too disabled, to park at the Motorgate and take the bus. The space around Goldwater Hospital, which now occupies the land that will be given to the Applied Sciences campus, is filled with cars. When an old insane asylum on the north end of the island was redeveloped into condos, the developers were able to get permission to build a 148-space underground garage.

Let's hope that the Cornell and Technion designers have more vision than they showed in that lame fly-through, and that they build something urban and scholarly, with really narrow streets, like in Paris's Latin Quarter. Let's hope that they don't think they're too good to take the train to work, or at least to park at the Motorgate and take the bus. But if they do, let's hope that Bloomberg, Steel and the RIOC will make them do the right thing.

Why not a longer "Tappan Zee High Line"?

Everyone knows I've got serious misgivings about the rails-to-trails movement, especially when people pull the rails out of perfectly functional, useful railroad infrastructure. I feel a lot better about roads-to-trails, and there are several good ones. The best is the section of the Long Island Motor Parkway that's been preserved here in Queens. There are other trails that use land taken for roads that were never built. I've walked on the Nassau-Suffolk Greenbelt, which follows an unbuilt section of the Bethpage Parkway. The Briarcliff-Peekskill Trailway in Westchester also uses an old parkway right-of-way.

Back in October when the Governor began his push for the Bridge Reconstruction merit badge, Paul Feiner, Supervisor of the Town of Greenburgh (which includes Tarrytown and Elmsford) suggested leaving the existing bridge standing for use by cyclists and pedestrians. This had been considered in earlier bridge replacement plans, but ultimately rejected in favor of a bike/pedestrian path on one of the two replacement spans. But if, as I've argued, the Tappan Zee Bridge should not be replaced, then Feiner's plan has a shot.

Instead of tearing the existing bridge down, we could keep two lanes for buses and use the rest of the width for a mixed-use path.

My question is, why stop there? The bridge itself is three miles long, but if we're not replacing it then we don't need the loud, polluting highway approaches. They'd just dump cars onto Routes 9 and 9W anyway.

Where the Thruway (Interstate 87) and the Cross-Westchester Expressway (I-287) split in Elmsford is right over the missing link between the two rail-trails that run in the right-of-way of the Old Putnam Line. If we reconfigured the highways so that northbound Thruway traffic turns east on the Cross-Westchester, then we can have the Tappan Zee High Line connect to the South County Trailway (PDF) there. It will also pass right under the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail.

On the Rockland County side, if we terminate the Thruway at the Palisades Parkway, we can extend the Tappan Zee High Line west for a total length of nine miles. It can connect to the Esposito Memorial Trail and the Long Path in Nyack. If we stop the Thruway at the Garden State Parkway, that makes twelve miles. Think of the recreational possibilities!

Of course, those connections assume that we don't reactivate the old Erie Main Line and the Putnam Line, but it might be worth it even so.

To be perfectly honest, with the length and the grades on the current bridge, I'm not sure it would be a pleasant trip - unless maybe we could have a concession for a bus stop, cafe and refreshment stand at the highest point. But it makes a lot more sense than some of the other recent proposals "high lines."

Getting Cuomo to do the right thing

Transit and livable streets advocates are rightly frustrated with the way Andrew Cuomo has dealt with our issues as governor. He has not been an anti-transit ideologue like Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and he has not championed drivers above everyone else like Bill Thompson or Carl Paladino. He is simply uninterested in transit. He has no personal use for it, and he does not see transit victories as particularly helpful or necessary in his career.

As a result, Cuomo has abandoned transit issues like the budget lockbox and the Tappan Zee BRT when it seemed they would get in the way of another goal like passing a popular revenue plan or reconstructing an aging bridge. He has prevaricated on issues like congestion pricing and the borough taxi bill when he feared they would anger an important constituency. He has failed to take the initiative on issues like Chris Christie's reallocation of Port Authority funds from transit to roads. And he has neglected transit champions like Chris Ward and Jay Walder, driving them out and replacing them with managers chosen for their loyalty to him rather than their commitment to making transit work.

This is incredibly frustrating, especially because we do not have very much of the kind of power that can command Cuomo's respect. The Occupy movement aroused so much sympathy among the mainstream media that Cuomo felt comfortable defying the New York Post editorial board and abandoning their absurd construal of "no new taxes." The Occupiers created space for Cuomo to advance his career by doing the right thing. They did this by camping out for months, playing drums and having lots of really long meetings, but the effect of all that was to get out the message about income inequality and taxation.

Let's look at another example of inequality. There's an argument to be made that it's unfair to maintain the "free" bridges with sales and income tax dollars while transit riders have to pay more and more for crappier service. Tolling the bridges would remedy some of that inequality (and bring in riders for the transit services). It's the right thing to do.

If Cuomo wanted to take a stand on bridge tolls, he would have to face the angry right-wing Democrats from the outer outer boroughs and the suburbs, and maybe even a few myopic liberals who are swayed by bogus arguments about regressive taxes and totalitarianism. He won't do the right thing without the kind of political cover that the Occupiers provided.

Are transit advocates capable of harnessing that kind of power? And if we're not, maybe we should be using a different strategy?

Rockland County needs Strong Towns, and the bridge won't help

Last week, Comptroller DiNapoli released an audit of Rockland County's finances. Much of the discussion of the audit has focused on the $52 million deficit in something called the "unappropriated fund balance": whose fault it is, and why County officials relied so heavily on the sale of a nursing home that fell through. But the real question is why the deficit appeared in the first place, and whether anything can be done to avoid them in the future. The audit report says,

We found that County officials over-budgeted revenues from sales and mortgage taxes. In years when the national economy showed negative growth, County officials estimated that sales and mortgage taxes (which represent 39 percent of the County’s revenue) would increase by 4 to 6 percent. While the County’s overall expenditures increased by 7 percent in 2007, revenue from sales and mortgage taxes increased by only 3 percent. The County’s sales and mortgage taxes continued to fall short of estimates by 13 percent in 2009, and results of operations for 2010 showed that this revenue source fell short by approximately 6 percent.

Number 3 on their list of five recommendations is:

3. The Legislature and County officials should realistically budget for sales and mortgage tax revenues and/or reduce general fund expenditures to levels that can be financed by recurring revenue sources.

When talk turns to local government financing, I think of the Strong Towns approach. Chuck Marohn and his friends Ben Oleson and Jon Commers have found that sprawl development is really bad for the budgets of local governments. They list the five key features of a Strong Town:

1. Must be near-term financially solvent.
2. Must have the tax base and resources to cover long-term financial commitments.
3. Must have sufficient age diversity so that population will be added at a rate greater than population is being lost.
4. Must have sufficient economic diversity and vibrancy so that businesses are being added at a rate greater than or equal to the rate they are being lost.
5. Must have the courage and leadership to plan for long-term viability.

I haven't delved into the finances of every town in Rockland County, but it sounds like the county at least has made financial commitments that they don't have the tax base and resources to cover. Chuck, Ben and Jon also list ten Placemaking Principles - there's some overlap with the key features listed above, but there are some new strategies for achieving them. Here are three that are particularly relevant for Rockland County:

• Strong Towns reduce costs associated with land use, transportation and development, and are able to reinvest these savings to strengthen their long-term position in the region and the world.
• To build an affordable transportation system, a Strong Town utilizes roads to move traffic safely at high speeds outside of neighborhoods and urban areas. Within neighborhoods and urban areas, a Strong Town uses complex streets to equally accommodate the full range of transportation options available to residents.
• To make transportation systems more efficient and affordable, to create economic opportunity and to enhance the community, neighborhoods in a Strong Town must be mixed use, with properly-scaled residential and commercial development.

If you've ever been on Route 202 in Suffern, Route 9W in Piermont, or pretty much anywhere along Route 59, you've been on what Chuck calls a "stroad":

Photo: dougtone / Flickr

If you want to start to see the world with Strong Towns eyes and truly understand why our development approach is bankrupting us, just watch your speedometer. Anytime you are traveling between 30 and 50 miles per hour, you are basically in an area that is too slow to be efficient yet too fast to provide a framework for capturing a productive rate of return.

Once you've done that, ask yourself: Which would reduce costs associated with land use, transportation and development: spending five billion dollars on an eight-lane highway bridge that will be expanded to ten, or spending that money rebuilding the rail connections to Newark, Jersey City and New York City?

Finally, when you're done with that, ask yourself: with a brand new bridge encouraging lots of driving, how much would a sprawl-oriented bus project really do to move Rockland away from its unsustainable sprawl and towards a Strong Towns way of life?

To solve the budget problems in Rockland County as, in the rest of the state and the country, as Chuck likes to say: we need to build places of value. We need to start building Strong Towns.

Why we can't afford to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge

Last week, Governor Cuomo went on Fred Dicker's radio show complaining about "the lack of initiative and ability to execute by state government." because people were telling him we can't afford to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge. He said, "We used to build bridges! ... I believe we can! I believe it doesn't have to be this way! I'm not giving up on us!"

Well I'm not giving up on us either! *sob* I'm okay, just let me compose myself... Right.

The Governor talks about "alternative financing," but what matters much more than where you're going to borrow the money from is how you're going to pay it back. The fact of the matter is that if we confine ourselves to using toll revenues, and keeping the tolls to no more than double the current tolls plus inflation, we will never be able to pay back $5.2 billion dollars. It's a mathematical impossibility. The money has to come from somewhere else. The Federal government? State taxpayers? Justin Bieber's personal fortune? Mugging old ladies on the street? It's anybody's guess, but it won't come from tolls unless we raise the tolls above twenty dollars round-trip.

Why can't we finance it with tolls? Now, Alan Chartock is fond of saying that Andrew Cuomo is a very smart guy, and it's true that the issue is not that obvious. But I have an answer for Cuomo. I know the reason we can't afford to build this bridge. It's not related to the economy or austerity or anything. It's a combination of three factors: the river is too wide, the bridge is too wide, and the cars are too empty.

Many people have observed that the Tappan Zee is the worst part of the river to build a bridge. There are some places, like the George Washington Bridge, where the river is relatively narrow and the bedrock relatively close to the surface. You drive some piles into the rock and hang a bridge off them. Expensive but doable. Even then, it's going to cost a billion dollars just to replace the suspender ropes.

The Tappan Zee Bridge is built on mud at the widest point in the river. That's just going to cost a lot more. The original bridge was built on the cheap during the Korean War, which is why maintenance costs so much today.

Secondly, remember that the new bridge is planned to be twice as wide as the old one, but with only a slightly higher number of cars crossing it. That's going to add to the expense as well.

Finally, most of the vehicles crossing the bridge are single-occupant. If they had two or three people in them on average, those people could get together and pool their money for the toll, and it wouldn't be too much for anyone. But if it's just one person, then that person is going to get very angry if tolls go above a certain level. The bridge can only fit so many cars, which means only so many people.

Cuomo isn't just a smart guy, he's a smart guy who signs the paychecks of lots of knowledgeable people with direct involvement with this project. The only way he doesn't know this is if those people are all too scared to say something the Governor doesn't like. On some level I'm guessing he does know this, which means that he's looking to pay for the project with something other than toll revenue. The fact that he's never mentioned that, despite spending hours talking about financing, suggests that whatever he's looking at, people aren't going to like it.

The Tappan Zee Bridge replacement is not about jobs

We all have needs, and many of the needs can be satisfied in different ways. For example, everyone needs a certain amount of protein in their diet, and you can get it from beef, chicken, beans or nuts. You could get your protein from barbecued elephant stakes, but most people would agree that it's a wasteful and environmentally destructive way of satisfying that basic need. It's the same with jobs.

Many of the most fervent arguments for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project, like this op-ed by Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee and another one by Rockland Business Association President Al Samuels, have focused on "jobs." Jaffee writes,

In addition to a new bridge, our community cannot afford to wait for new jobs. At a time when the state unemployment rate is 8 percent, we cannot waste any opportunity to spur economic growth. Building a new Tappan Zee Bridge is estimated to create up to 150,000 new jobs, a huge boost for our region and state. And by speeding up the process and finally getting a quick date for construction, our community will have these jobs now, when we need them most.

Well, yes, Assemblywoman, if an "opportunity to spur economic growth" is a shitty one, we certainly can waste it, and we should. Not all employment programs are created equal. There are many ways to create jobs, including monetary policy, unemployment insurance and infrastructure spending. You could create jobs by rebuilding the Tappan Zee Bridge, but it's a wasteful and environmentally destructive way of satisfying that basic economic need.

On a basic level, you could pay people to dig holes and fill them up for years, and stimulate the economy that way, but some forms of stimulus are better and others are worse. For years, Smart Growth America has been highlighting data showing that government spending on mass transit projects creates more and better jobs per dollar than road projects.

If you want to create jobs in the Lower Hudson Valley, why not spend it rebuilding the old rail infrastructure? I bet that five billion dollars would be enough to rebuild the tracks on every train line that ever existed in Orange, Bergen and Rockland Counties, double-track them, lower the floor on the West Shore Line, and restore passenger service on all of them. Any leftover money could be spent rebuilding the Putnam Line and NYW&B in Westchester, or digging the Cross-Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel. Tons of good jobs there. No need to rebuild a bridge that has filled the area with sprawl and will only generate more sprawl.

The 2010 farebox numbers

It's December, and that means it's time for the release of this year's National Transit Database! See past analyses for 2007, 2008 and 2009.

The Chattanooga inclines lead the pack again, with 194.3. Pittsburgh's inclines are way down, at only 80.1%. Port Imperial (140.1) and BillyBey (105.1) also did very well. The University of Georgia is listed, but they don't charge fares, so the revenue must come from the college and doesn't really count as "farebox" revenue.

New York City Transit is at 71.7% this year, and BART is just under at 71.6%. Now for the buses:

Name	Fare Revenues per Total Operating Expense (Recovery Ratio)	Lincoln Tunnel XBL
Trans-Bridge Lines, Inc.	132.3	Yes
Orange-Newark-Elizabeth, Inc. (Coach USA)	114.9
Trans-Hudson Express	111	Yes
Olympia Trails Bus Company, Inc. (Coach USA)	105.4	Yes
New Jersey Transit Corporation-45(NJTC-45)	105.3	Yes
Community Transit, Inc. (Community Transit)	101.1	Yes
Martz Group, National Coach Works of Virginia (NCW)	91.5	Yes
Suburban Transit Corporation (Coach USA)	89.1	Yes
Academy Lines, Inc.	85.9	Yes
Monroe Bus Corporation	83.3	Yes
Rockland Coaches, Inc.	79.9	Yes
Hudson Transit Lines, Inc. (Short Line)	79.3	Yes
Lakeland Bus Lines, Inc.	78.5	Yes
DeCamp Bus Lines	77.5	Yes
Monsey New Square Trails Corporation	77	Yes
Adirondack Transit Lines, Inc. (Adirondack Trailways)	76.7	Yes

Bonanza is gone from the list, probably because it's been folded into Peter Pan, which does not report its figures to the NTD. Nothing really new this year, just the same sixteen companies, half of them owned by Stagecoach, most of them using the Lincoln Tunnel XBL.

Tappan Zee carnage: don't pee on my back and tell me it's raining!

I want to highlight one particular piece of Tappan Zee bullshit tonight: the traffic safety issue. Our Governor says, "with seven narrow lanes and no safety shoulders, the Tappan Zee has an accident rate double the rest of the New York Thruway system." And to be specific, the State Department of Transportation says, "In 2007, the accident rate on the New York State Thruway was 1.1161 per million vehicle miles, lower than the New York State accident rate of approximately 2.36. The accident rate on the Tappan Zee was more than twice the Thruway rate, at 2.4250 per million vehicle miles." But how many crashes are we actually talking about? "In a 3-year period from July 2004 to June 2007 there were 1,645 accidents that occurred between Interchange 9 in Tarrytown and Interchange 10 in Nyack, which includes the Tappan Zee Bridge, the approaches to the bridge, and the toll plaza." So just under 550 crashes a year.

I've touched on it before, but I think it's important to get us absolutely crystal clear on this. The traffic safety issue is bogus. The Governor could bring the crash rate down tomorrow with one phone call. It would cost a few thousand dollars at most. He doesn't need to spend five billion dollars on a new bridge to do it.

Seven narrow lanes and no safety shoulders? Gee, what can you do about that? Well, here's an idea, Governor:

Thruway engineer Steve Velicky is proud of his paint. Photo: Skip Dickson / Albany Times Union

You could paint the lanes wider!

I mean, this is basic geometry, right? If wider lanes and shoulders lower the "volume-to-capacity ratio" and make a highway bridge safer, than just paint wider lanes and shoulders.

The most recent plans call for two 82-foot-wide spans, each with four lanes on them, so four lanes must be the safety standard for an 82-foot-wide span. The current span is ... 82 feet wide, so if we repainted it with four lanes, it would be just as safe as the replacement bridge. Problem solved, five billion dollars saved! What more is there to say?

Well, of course there's a lot more to say. You could make the bridge significantly safer by simply repainting the lanes, but that would mean that not as many drivers could get across, which would bring down toll revenues. You could raise the tolls to the market-clearing price, but then you'd have a bunch of angry people who could no longer afford to drive to work in Westchester.

In fact, the bridge used to have six wider lanes, but in 1990 they were repainted to make room for a reversible center lane, and an expensive barrier-transfer system was installed, allowing 30,000 more cars to cross it every day. That's right, the State actually decided in one fell swoop to increase the annual costs of the bridge and make it less safer. Pee on my back and tell me it's raining!

The leadership of the state has decided that they don't care as much about safety (or cost) as about moving cars and trucks across the bridge. They have never been motivated by safety to do anything significant on the Tappan Zee Bridge. Safety is not their motivation now, and it will not motivate them once the bridge is replaced. As in 1990, the safety features that are one of the major selling points for the new bridge will be compromised one by one to make room for more cars.

The north structure - during construction

I checked in on the "new" Tappan Zee Bridge website, and I found something interesting. The "boards" from the two scoping sessions held in October are now online as a PDF. Board 16 has cross-sections that answer my question as to how the lanes would be divided under these plans. Here's the north span:

There would be four twelve-foot lanes, a ten-foot shoulder, an eight-foot shoulder, a twelve-foot "shared path" for cyclists, pedestrians and skaters, and a twelve-foot "emergency access" lane.

The south structure would have all that, minus the shared path. But what's this? It says, "To facilitate construction, the north structure will be built first, followed by the south structure." And here's what the north structure would look like "during construction" of the south structure:

Funny, it looks just like our existing 82-foot bridge, with an extra lane added!

This seems like a straightforward way to replace a bridge, and maybe that's all it is, but something smells. Does it smell to you? I'm not really sure what Cuomo and the cranky old highway engineers at the State DOT are up to, but allow me to indulge in some wild speculation:

1. Are they actually planning to build the second span any time soon? It could be the ultimate cheapskate tactic: build one span that will add a lane and eliminate the expensive barrier transfer, and never deliver on the second span that will yield the promised shoulders, shared path and "emergency access." By that time, Cuomo will be President and the new Governor can announce that, sorry, there's no money for the south structure!

2. If they build both structures, how long does anyone think the extra lane will be reserved for "emergency access"? My guess is that as soon as the new bridge is open, at the first traffic jam some enterprising politician will start the clamor to have the "emergency access" lane opened to general traffic. That assumes that people will still be able to afford to commute by car across the bridge in the same numbers they've been doing it. That in turn assumes that a wave of outrage will have already persuaded Cuomo to call off the planned doubling of tolls and pay for the south span with income tax money (twist his arm!), and that gas prices won't have risen too high.

3. How much longer after that do you think the shoulders will still be there?

Questions about financing

If you go to CVS you can buy a bag of Canada Mints for a dollar, and pay with your credit card. You're borrowing money but you don't really think about how you're going to pay it back, because your income stream is so much bigger than that single dollar. But if you go to Best Buy and put a thousand dollar computer on the credit card, you should be thinking about how you're going to pay it off. Will your income be able to cover the credit card payments? If you take out a student loan to go to medical school, the loan itself helps you pay for the skills that can earn you enough money to pay it off. But will your income be enough to cover the loan payments?

If you're borrowing a large amount relative to your income, you'll also want to think about alternate arrangements in case you can't pay that off. If you can't make your student loan payments, there's usually a hardship clause that entitles you to request forbearance. If you can't pay the credit card bill, you might be able to ask your mom to help.

Thinking about regular and alternate repayment methods is the smart thing to do, because you know that if you don't repay your debts on time, you could be hit with penalties. If you use a car as collateral it could be reposessed, and a house could be foreclosed on. You could lower your credit rating, so that if you're able to borrow at all in the future, you may only be offered high interest rates. If you ask Mom to pay your credit card bills, you may wind up having tea with her and Aunt Gladys every week. But the main thing is that you might wind up spending so much of your money on debt service that you can't afford to buy anything new, or even to go to the doctor.

Now we need to be very careful about comparing government debt, especially sovereign government debt, with private debt. Households can't print money to make it easier to pay off their debts. But in this case, government debt is similar: if we ask "How are we going to pay for it?" and the answer is, "We'll borrow the money," we need to ask the two follow-up questions: "Will our income cover the payments on the debt?" and "What do we do if our income doesn't cover the loan payments?"

These are the smart questions to ask, because if New York State doesn't repay its debts on time, we'll face a credit downgrade, and we'll have to pay higher interest rates on bonds in the future. If we get a bailout from the federal government, they'll probably insist on some kind of financial oversight committee. But the main thing is that we might wind up spending so much of our money on debt service that we won't be able to build anything new, or even maintain our existing infrastructure.

In the discussions of paying to rebuild the Tappan Zee Bridge, I've heard a lot about where we're going to borrow the money. There's been very little about how the money will be paid back, and what we will do if we can't make the payments. Those are the smart questions to ask. Why isn't anyone asking them?