The new Goethals Bridge between New York and New Jersey is now open in both directions after a five-year, $1.5 billion overhaul.
The Staten Island Advance says traffic moved smoothly during the Monday morning rush-hour.
The westbound side was opened Sunday night. The eastbound lanes were opened last June.
The new Goethals has three 12-foot lanes in each direction. The old one had two narrower lanes each way.
The bridge also has shoulders that improve access for emergency vehicles.
The Goethals has connected Elizabeth, New Jersey, with Staten Island since 1928.
(AP)
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4 Responses
Hopefully this helps the crazy summer exodus traffic. Problem is, you can have these fancy new larger bridges, but the SI Expsway is still packed.
All of the recent suspension bridges have the cables supporting the roadway hooked into the towers supporting the bridge which seems so obvious to us now that its done that way. However for well over 100 years they would 1st drape those huge very thick cables over the whole bridge for the purpose of using them to support the cables holding up the roadway.
So the fact that it took them over 100 years till they realized they can use the towers themselves to provide support for those cables, and that there was no need for those huge thick cables they always used is remarkable.
to baishatalmuder: Progress in engineering takes, among other things, time. The design of the new Goethals bridge has been around for about 20 years. As older bridges, based on older designs, wear out, new designs will replace them. What is remarkable is that the old designs have lasted so long, not that it took so long to come up with something better.
More importantly, the engineers think they have something better in these new designs, but until they stand up for 80 or 120 years, like the Brooklyn Bridge, the engineers won’t know for sure.
Now if they’d make automated tolls coming off the NJ Turnpike to get on the bridge Staten Island bound, traffic would move even more smoothly.