One emergency away from chaos
traffic disasters throw the
Island into gridlock, pinpointing an immediate need for solutions
Staten Island Advance
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
The traffic-snarling accidents that forced the
separate closures of the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge
Crossing Friday were glaring reminders of just how vulnerable Staten
Island is to traffic disasters, and transit advocates warn that the
borough will always be one emergency away from such chaos unless it
develops new ways to navigate through the Island.
With two of the Island's four bridges shut down
Friday, the simultaneous accidents -- the actual accident scenes
only blocked a few feet of lane space -- caused motorized mayhem
across the borough and throughout the region.
"It makes you realize exactly how vulnerable we are
living on Staten Island," said Gayle Tauger, a social worker at
Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth, N.J., and who was stuck in traffic
when the Goethals was closed.
"Our only means of coming and going are these lousy
bridges," said the Great Kills resident.
Motorists were banned from the Goethals for more
than 12 hours as rescue workers tried to clean away the debris field
which included a tractor trailer loaded with 500,000 cubic feet of
liquid oxygen. The span was closed shortly before 1 p.m. and
reopened yesterday at 2:15 a.m. The Outerbridge Crossing was closed
for approximately an hour.
The massive tie-ups reminded observers of Thursday's
crash and fire that destroyed an overpass along Interstate 95 in
Bridgeport, Conn.
In that accident, a tanker carrying 9,000 gallons of
fuel oil collided with a car and crashed and exploded. Officials
there are now coping with how to direct some 120,000 vehicles that
use the highway daily through local roads because there are not many
other alternatives.
The Island, however, has alternative New Jersey
connections, prompting authorities to ponder an even worse
possibility: What if a chemical spill, fire or terrorist attack
closed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which has no backup?
"That's a bad scenario," said Jonathan Peters, a
finance professor at the College of Staten Island who studies the
borough's transportation.
For the roughly 200,000 vehicles that use the bridge
daily, "the Verrazano Bridge is the sole east/west contact," Peters
said. "The only other option is the ferry."
The ferry alternative, however, is slower and could
become overwhelmed in an emergency. And that alternative might not
help the tens of thousands of Islanders who travel to Brooklyn and
Long Island, nor provide relief for the thousands of trucks that use
that bridge, which is a critical corridor to Long Island.
The practical effect of a Verrazano closure on par
with the Bridgeport fire "would be a major freight crisis and a
major transit crisis for the commuters to and from Manhattan," said
Peters, who recommend diversifying the Island's transportation
alternatives by establishing a subway or vehicular tunnel connection
to Brooklyn, or by a rail link to New Jersey.
The New York Economic Development Corporation is
studying a freight rail link between Brooklyn and New Jersey, which
could potentially reduce the number of trucks passing through Staten
Island's bridges.
"Having any one asset be critical to the whole
operation is not good," Peters said. "You want to have a few
different alternatives, you want to have a diversification so that
if any particular item is damaged or incapacitated that you have the
ability to utilize something else."
The Port Authority, which manages the Island's
bridges to New Jersey, has planned rehabilitation of the Outerbridge
Crossing and has long-term plans to modernize the Goethals, either
by building a replacement or a "twin."
But any replacement to the Goethals is still years
away and Port Authority officials have long acknowledged that the
agency's three spans, built in the late 1920s and early 1930s, are
virtually obsolete.
The 78,000 daily vehicle crossings at the Goethals,
which includes about 8,000 trucks, have already strained the
75-year-old-bridge, with its narrow lanes and crumbling deck.
When that link is closed, as it was on Friday, it
then strains the other links to New Jersey, the Outerbridge Crossing
-- which moves even more vehicles annually -- and the relatively
little-used Bayonne Bridge, which moves only about a quarter as many
vehicles as the other bridges.
Jon Orcutt, executive director of the Tri-State
Transportation Campaign, said that even when there are no
emergencies, the Island's bridge system already contributes to
congestion in the form of bottlenecks at the toll plazas.
Orcutt also believes diversifying the ways of
getting on and off the Island as vital to avoiding emergencies. His
dream scenario calls for a new a Goethals bridge, with bike lanes
and rail service to New Jersey; expanded ferry service between
Staten Island and Manhattan with the possibility of boats running to
Brooklyn and New Jersey commercial districts; and special bus-only
lanes.
"Staten Island is always going to depend on bridges
and some form of water-borne access to other places," he said.
"If you do have a series of incidents on more than
one of them, you are certainly going to get snarled up."
by Jill Gardiner and Seth Solomonow
Reprinted here with permission from the
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