Bridge Progress and Four Years in Two Minutes

Blue jump forms will help build the main span’s 419-foot towers./Photo: NYSTA

Taking a look back two years ago when the main span towers were beginning. Here are the past four years in two minutes courtesy of the project team.

I’d like to know what you think.

Copyright © Janie Rosman and Kaleidoscope Eyes 2017

Maintenance Facility Structure is taking Shape

These photos of the new maintenance facility near the Westchester landing were taken two weeks ago, when I drove across the new span.

Crews are constructing walls and preparing steel fabrications, and they continue building footing and retaining walls for the police facility on the south side of the Thruway.

I’d like to know what you think.

Copyright © Janie Rosman and Kaleidoscope Eyes 2017

Crews readying New Span for Traffic Shift

Yesterday’s story in the Rockland County Times posted prior to these new photos of crews paving the westbound span in preparation for rubber meeting the road two weeks from tonight. Photos courtesy of New York State Thruway Authority.

“There’s a lot of new work in Rockland,” one nurse, who lives in Monsey and works at mom’s facility, told me, referring to what she saw at that landing. Work on both landings includes preparing slot drains, temporary barriers and striping.

Final driving surface prep will be completed this week.

I’d like to know what you think.

Copyright © Janie Rosman and Kaleidoscope Eyes 2017

What You’ll See when the first New Span Opens

All week I’ve been saying something else will happen when traffic moves to the new westbound span. It was the first thought that came to my mind, and the pictures I posted — you are here, look over there — hopefully lent themselves to the answer:

Westbound motorists will be level with the eastbound span and will have a better (not perfect) view of what’s doing there. It’s still an active construction project, and we’re all curious, especially me!

Four weeks from tonight, the Thruway Authority and Tappan Zee Constructors, LLC (TZC) will shift four lanes of Rockland-bound traffic to the nothernmost span of the new Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

Part two of the move — transferring Westchester-bound traffic from the current bridge to that span and separating it from opposite-direction traffic by a jersey barrier — happens later this fall. Eastbound traffic shifts to its own span when the bridge opens in 2018.

I’d like to know what you think.

Copyright © Janie Rosman and Kaleidoscope Eyes 2017

Two of the four Tower Cranes were Removed

This is a hint re my earlier blog post. If you consider the angle, then it’s telling. Something really cool will happen when the westbound span opens. Still stumped?

Checking out the cranes as the towers gain height via jump forms/© Janie Rosman 2016

Let’s focus on what you can no longer see: tower cranes. Two of the four cranes are gone which, project officials said, means the westbound span needs no more “major” construction. Crews are now putting the finishing touches, if you will, on the Rockland-bound span of the new Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

I’d like to know what you think.

Copyright © Janie Rosman and Kaleidoscope Eyes 2017