City Island Civic Association

Because of the haste with which the Civic was asked to respond to the Coast Guard notice about the new City Island bridge, the Executive Committee sent the attached letter to Council Member Vacca and to the Coast Guard, upon receipt of several emails from Island residents.

To: James Vacca, Council Member
From: The City Island Civic Association July 7, 2010

Re: Coast Guard Notice re: new City Island Bridge

Although we did not receive the Coast Guard’s notice until Friday, July 2, the response from the many City Island residents to whom we forwarded the notice by e-mail has been immediate and nearly universal in its rejection of the city’s plans to replace the City Island bridge with the cable-stayed design that DOT insists on constructing in its place. We are very concerned with the susceptibility of cable-stayed bridges to vibration in high-wind situations, which have become increasingly common in this area, as well as to fatigue and corrosion in salt-water areas. We are also very concerned about the inadequacy of the temporary bridge (see below) in light of City Island’s traffic problems and accessibility in emergency situations.

Although some Island residents want to retain and renovate the existing bridge (claiming that its eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places makes it worth saving), many others accept the fact that the bridge has outlived its usefulness. We are, however, puzzled by the paragraph re: the execution of a “memorandum of agreement” by FWHA and NYSHPO mitigating damage to the bridge, since it seems that complete destruction is what the city has in mind. At least two residents propose that the central part of the existing bridge be adapted to serve as the central part of a new bridge, but not the current cable-stayed design.

The universal response has to do with the cable-stayed design, which residents reject for several reasons, most having to do with its inappropriateness for the City Island community. When it was first proposed, and when Mayor Bloomberg made it clear that City Island was going to get it, like it or not (squashing our application to have the current bridge landmarked), he was hoping for the Olympics and he clearly wanted to leave an architectural legacy. We rejected the more attractive design on the grounds that a 450-foot tower would be totally out of place here, but the only alternative offered was the 150-foot version, which is clunky, aesthetically inappropriate to City Island, and still too high for a community where the allowable height for buildings is only 35 feet. We had a few meetings with the Bronx DOT commissioner at the time to mitigate the ugliness of the design, but nothing was done for several years until Ms. Moran, the current commissioner, came to us with a completed design, pronouncing it final. It doesn’t seem to bother her or anyone at DOT that the budget for the bridge has increased from $26 million to $120 million, or that cable-stayed bridges have been pronounced expensive to maintain (surely it is cheaper to maintain supports in the water than it is to maintain steel cables 150 feet in the air) and would take three years to complete.

The Garden Club of City Island (letter attached) has already suggested that the city reconsider its plan in light of the success of bridge built by the city of Minneapolis over the Mississippi River after the collapse of its existing bridge. The replacement bridge is a causeway design that came in under budget and in six months, in spite of Minneapolis weather. When we spoke in person to Mr. Perahia of DOT about this alternative, he said that he wasn’t about to take a chance on a bridge that hadn’t been tried. But the Minneapolis bridge is now two years old and the cable-stayed bridge is the one that hasn’t been tried. There is no such bridge in New York City, and the design was rendered by an engineering firm that has never built such a bridge.

Ms. Moran has said that it would be too expensive to start with a new design, but we disagree. If it were possible to construct a simpler bridge that could be built for less than $100 million, there would already be a savings of $20 million. Surely that would make the money spent so far nearly negligible. And the potential savings in maintenance would be considerable, given that there is a known history of problems with steel corrosion and fatigue on cable-stayed bridges in other salt-water areas, as well as potential damage from vibration in high winds, which are increasing in this area.

We have not heard from any of the local maritime industries about their response to the Coast Guard proposal; presumably the Coast Guard should know how to reach them directly. The fishing boats, however, do not go under the existing bridge, nor would they plan to go under the new bridge, since it will still be far too low for anything but pleasure craft. The only yacht club that would be affected is the Touring Kayak Club, but their craft won’t be affected by this construction.

Beyond our community-wide objection to the design of the proposed new bridge, we are extremely worried about the temporary bridge, which is 6 feet narrower than the existing bridge. Increasingly congested traffic using the fire lane will make life very perilous for those living on the island, since emergency vehicles would definitely have problems crossing such a bridge. In light of the recent accident and the bridge’s having been closed for four hours, the design of the temporary bridge is a very troubling one. Since the cable-stayed design will take so long to construct, the temporary bridge will have to be in place for many months longer than necessary. A simpler causeway design could, presumably, be largely manufactured offsite and installed far more quickly than the cable-stayed version.

We appeal to you as our Council Member to prevail on DOT and do what you can to convince the department that City Island residents are very unhappy about this imposition of bureaucratic will on a community that continues to be ignored. We are prepared to hold demonstrations and hold publicity-attracting events involving school children as well as adult residents to make it difficult for the city to run roughshod over us.

If DOT is not willing to change designs, then we would campaign very hard to have them rehabilitate the existing bridge.