The Henry Hudson Bridge, a Robert Moses project, provides the northern-most escape off the island of Manhattan. (Courtesy of flickr user King Coyote)
Let me leave the subways behind for a minute and talk instead about a lesser-known branch of the MTA: MTA Bridges and Tunnels. Once the various authorities headed by Robert Moses, the MTABT came about under the consolidation of those authorities when the MTA came into existence in the 1960s. MTA Bridges and Tunnels is the largest such public authority in the nation.
While not nearly as interesting or as environmentally friendly as the subways, every now and then something Bridge and Tunnel-y comes along that strikes my fancy. The recent news about the road work on the Henry Hudson Bridge is such a story.
The bridge at the north end of Manhattan spanning the waters known as the Spuyten Duyvil Creek and I go way back. Heading to high school, I would cross that bridge every day. Leaving the city from my home on the Upper West Side, I would cross that bridge. And of course, heading back into Manhattan, I would cross the lower level of that bridge, and it would feel like riding over some rugged, back-country dirt road.
Well, no longer will that road test your car’s shocks because the MTA is going to start a three-year construction project on the original roadbed of the 70-year-old bridge. The Associated Press has more:
Crews have begun preliminary work to replace the original Depression-era lower-level deck of the Henry Hudson Bridge as part of an $84 million rehabilitation project, transit officials said Thursday.
The project will replace the four-lane lower deck of the bridge and rehabilitate the approach…The work is expected to be finished in the spring of 2010, said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Bridges and Tunnels division, which operates the city’s major bridges and tunnels. It will be done in four stages as each lane is replaced, the agency said.
As anyone who has recently driven across that lower level knows, this is a project years overdue. But interestingly enough, this is the first such deck replacement since the bridge opened on Dec. 12, 1936. The upper level, as I think back to the traffic jams, had its deck replaced in 1998.
Traffic will be bad crossing this span as they tackle a lane at a time, but in the end, it will be well worth it. After 70 years of service, this bridge needs a new lower level.