Tappan Bridge Park
Thursday, February 02, 2012 08:54 PM
By David McKay Wilson
As state and federal highway officials move to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge, they should seriously consider preserving the bridge, and transforming it into Tappan Bridge Park – a three-mile long park of 33 acres that would become a world-class destination for cyclists and pedestrians.
That bridge has been rebuilt over the past decade with $500 million in public funds. It’s slated for another $1.3 billion in repairs by the time the last car crosses the bridge less than a decade from today.
That’s an incredible investment in transportation infrastructure that will have plenty of life in it when it’s time to call it quits for Interstate traffic.
Imagine those 33 acres as an urban park in one of the world’s most densely populated region, with a pathway, gardens, patches of woods, places to experience the Hudson. It would be the lower Hudson Valley’s Highline, our own Walkway across the Hudson. Both linear urban parks – the Highline in Manhattan and the Walkway in Poughkeepsie - have proved wildly popular. And they were developed with substantial financial support from the private sector, a key element of any plan to save the old TZ. The Walkway and Highline are green economic engines that engage entrepreneurs and spark community.
A Tappan Bridge Park would transform the old TZ into a world-class recreational destination, igniting a boom in healthy living and sparking economic development on both sides of the river.
The bridge – now in the prime of middle-age at 56 years old – will have plenty of life left in him when the new bridge opens. The original plan would have the northern span built first, with its seven lanes supplying enough capacity to close the old bridge. It would be dismantled with a crane, and floated down the river by barge to some reprocessing plant. Then the southern span could rise up to add another seven lanes. Each span would be one-way once they are both built.
What the Cuomo and Obama administrations have yet to decide, is what to do with the old bridge.
That gives me hope. So does the fact that the Tappan Zee Bridge has been deemed eligible by the state Office of Historic Preservation for the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the nation's historic places worthy of preservation. This bridge is our heritage, the iconic image of the lower Hudson Valley and the northeast corridor. Why not preserve it? Why not make it a preserve?
The bottom line is that the TZ will have significant life left in it when its toll-collecting days are done. And wouldn’t it improve our region to have this ribbon of parkland linking Westchester and Rockland counties across the mighty Hudson? It could ignite a boom in healthy living and bolster economies on both sides of the river.
There are substantial hurdles – money to develop it, the logistics of constructing the southerly span if the old TZ stays, and the condition of the bridge for usage by pedestrians and cyclists. The federal environmental review must consider the preservation option, and seriously study the costs – both monetary and environmental – of tearing down the bridge. Those costs must be compared with the costs – and substantial benefits – of letting it remain standing.
The structural deficiencies noted in the US DOT’s scoping document related to the TZ’s inability withstand an earthquake, requirements that are part of the federal highway law.
But the regulations for parkland are much less strict, and that bridge, with $500 million in repairs over the past decade, and another $1.3 billion planned, could stand as a park for decades to come.
David McKay Wilson, a member of the Tappan Bridge Park Alliance, is executive director of the Bike Walk Alliance of Westchester & Putnam and advocacy director of the Westchester Cycle Club
