Borough President Guy Molinari told the S.I. Advance this week that, "My position on this has not changed. There will be some limited relief to some of the Staten Island commuters, but the twin Goethals is designed primarily to get traffic across Staten Island and through Staten Island to other boroughs. [This will add to S.I. gridlock] especially if the Manhattan-bound traffic is backed up on the S.I. Expressway or on the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn." Molinari said S.I. has not been treated well by the PA, and is waiting for a plan that outlines real improvements for the borough.

City Councilman John Fusco concurred: "There is absolutely no positive impact on Staten Island or for its residents [from the Goethals project]. It will move traffic quicker from NJ to Staten Island, but where does it go from there? It still has to exit the same Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and take the same Gowanus."

The NY State DOT is undertaking a major investment study of capacity problems on the Staten Island Expressway. The DOT is most interested in adding an HOV lane to the highway, but is already under criticism for not considering ways to boost transit capacity and reduce, rather than encourage, more traffic on Staten Island. The Expressway study is not formally linked to the Goethals plan, or to any of a number of examinations of cross-harbor freight movement and public transit on Staten Island. Faced with opposition and competing priorities, the Goethals project was removed from the Port Authority capital plan last year. But PA planners who still favor the project may wait to see if the NY DOT wins approval for the S.I.E. HOV lane, and then use it as the dog to wag the Goethals tail. 

The Advance editorial board echoed Molinari's and Fusco's criticism this week, calling the Goethals twin a "bad idea that refuses to die." The paper said that the PA and other planners are "looking too narrowly at the problem and failing to look beyond the ramps of the Goethals Bridge." For Staten Island, the Goethals project holds only "epic traffic jams, added pollution and thousands more cars using the borough as an approach to other points around the metropolitan area." The paper says it's time to end "decades of abject transportation planning" on S.I. and in the region.