ALBANY — Memo from the governor: Keep the toll on the new Tappan Zee Bridge under $14.
Gov. Cuomo yesterday said he wants a task force that includes federal officials to help the state Thruway Authority keep the cash toll below the figure his own administration projected for the anticipated 2017 opening of a new Tappan Zee Bridge.
It’s nearly three times the current $5 cash toll on the aging bridge.
“Maybe there’s ways to negotiate a better deal on the bridge, make it less expensive. Maybe there are ways to find federal funding that could be helpful,” Cuomo said on Albany’s Talk 1300 AM radio.
This would not be the first time Cuomo reduces a toll increase proposed by a state or bistate authority.
Last August, he and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pared down a whopping proposed Port Authority toll-increase proposal for Hudson River crossings, although the toll still increased by 50 percent, to $12.
Cuomo also revealed yesterday that a new Tappan Zee would be built with a projected 100-year life span, double the life expectancy of the current span that links Westchester and Rockland counties across the Hudson.
And he told Thruway Authority officials he wants the new bridge to be a thing of beauty.
“I’d like to have a blue-ribbon panel make the selection [of the contractor and bridge design], not just technical-engineering panels and cost panels,” said Cuomo, a Westchester resident of Mount Kisco.
“It’s one of the most beautiful areas in the world, I believe.”
Cuomo got some unexpected help this week in his aggressive campaign to enlist support from local elected officials for building a new bridge: former Gov. George Pataki, a Hudson Valley Republican who ousted the governor’s father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, in 1994.