The NY State Thruway Authority and Metro-North Railroad will hold public scoping meetings for the draft environmental impact statement they are about to begin for a possible Tappan Zee Bridge replacement and construction of a cross-Hudson transit line in the Rockland-Westchester corridor. 

   The meetings are scheduled for the third week of January (see Calendar, last page), in Westchester, Rockland and Orange Counties.  Scoping meetings give the public a chance to urge the agencies to look at various project alternatives and likely impacts.

   The scoping document issued by the agencies in advance of the meetings largely covers known ground.  The study will look at the congestion problem in the I-287/Tappan Zee Bridge corridor, at the relative lack of alternatives to driving and at Tappan Zee Bridge structural problems.  Aspects of these issues to be studied include rehabilitating the Tappan Zee Bridge or replacing it with a new bridge or tunnel, whether and what kind of transit might be able to effectively serve the corridor, or whether new highway or transit capacity should be located elsewhere in order to relieve pressure at the Tappan Zee.

   Still, the scoping spotlights several important issues.  First, its “corridor improvements” section is the clearest expression yet of the fact that adding highway lanes at the Tappan Zee crossing will likely lead to agency proposals to widen I-287 through Rockland County.   Second, the document proposes to consider land use impacts only in “areas approximately one-half mile on either side of the Corridor,” which will preclude any worthwhile consideration of the transportation/sprawl dynamic that extending major new transportation capacity into Rockland and Orange Counties could create.

   Additionally, the document describes a variety of policy and project options whose implementation may take place in a wide range of time frames, and are not mutually exclusive.  Demand management policies that could bring congestion relief in a few months will be studied alongside huge construction projects that could take a decade or more to realize.  Is there an early-action component to the program?  Why not take the Thruway’s existing congestion pricing study results in hand and make policy recommendations to decision makers rather than study the issue all over again? 




 

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