The bridge, which links New Jersey and Staten Island, is inextricably bound to the future success of the New York Harbor.
Upgrades to the Panama Canal means bigger ships will make their way through the channel and up the East Coast by 2014. But these mega container ships won’t fit under the Bayonne Bridge, which means they can’t enter New York harbor.
The Port Authority is spending $1 billion to lift the roadway, so the ships can fit underneath. But there’s a time crunch. The bridge won’t be completed until two years after the Panama Canal is widened.
Without the bigger cargo ships, the port industry is a risk of losing business to other regional harbors.
Faster federal permitting and reviews could shave up to six months off the project’s timeline. “Every day that a project like this is delayed results in additional accruals of financial costs, and every day and week and month that we can eliminate saves the project and the region money,” Port Authority Director Patrick Foye said.
President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order on Permitting and Federal Review last month. It was an idea he introduced during his State of the Union Address.
“We were
Article source: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2012/apr/08/port-authority-awaits-fed-decision-bayonne-bridge-project/ posted in Panama Canal
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