The governor got burned by his own bridge.
Andrew Cuomo’s rushed opening of the span memorializing his late father morphed into a monumental mess Saturday when the new crossing was shut down before a single car drove across.
Friday’s ceremonial launch of the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge connecting Westchester and Rockland counties was filled with speeches bashing President Trump and boasts about successful infrastructure projects by Gov. Cuomo and Hillary Clinton.
The eastbound side of the twin-spanned bridge was set to open to traffic overnight. But the governor’s signature $3.9 billion infrastructure project — which he claimed “restores confidence in ourselves” — was ruled unsafe as workers were preparing it.
Engineers determined that rusting remnants of the old Tappan Zee Bridge right next to it could collapse onto the new span.
“We want to make sure nothing happens that would hurt the new bridge or that would endanger anyone on the new bridge,” Cuomo explained Saturday at the Labor Day Parade in Midtown.
With only one of the 3.1-mile bridge’s two spans now open, Cuomo, who toured the site Tuesday, said traffic won’t transfer to the other “until we know definitively that nothing is going to happen on the old bridge that would affect the new span.”
As drivers faced yet more tie-ups on the bridge Saturday, Cuomo’s critics, eyeing Thursday’s Democratic primary, pounced.
They questioned the timing of Friday’s ceremony by Cuomo, who announced a “mid-September” launch after taking an unplanned tour of the site on Aug. 27.
“A ribbon-cutting ceremony should not have been held if the bridge span was not yet safe,” said Cynthia Nixon, Cuomo’s primary opponent.
“There’s a reason they call him ‘Governor Photo Op.’ We shouldn’t be playing with public safety to open a bridge that is unready.”
The former “Sex and the City” actress said there were “real, reasonable questions about whether this bridge span opening was accelerated to aid the governor’s campaign” and called for a “speedy” probe into e-mails exchanged in the run-up to the ribbon-cutting.
Cuomo’s office would not say whether it sped up the opening.
“This is not an episode of ‘Sex and the City,’ it’s real life,” said spokeswoman Dani Lever. “The Mario M. Cuomo bridge is complete and ready for traffic, and the action taken by TPZ [Tappan Zee] Constructors, given the potential issue on the old structure, was out of an abundance of caution and about public safety, not politics.
“Anyone trying to score political points off of it only underscores why they are unfit to serve.”
Jamey Barbas, project director for the state Thruway Authority, said in a conference call late Saturday that Tappan Zee Constructors, the joint venture behind the project, had said it would open the span on Sept. 8 “three weeks or a month ago.” But Cuomo did not specify a date when he was on the bridge Aug. 27.
Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Molinaro called the shutdown “shocking.”
“It’s now clearer than ever that the bridge was opened to meet Governor Cuomo’s political timetable without regard to public safety,” the Dutchess County Executive said.
While he was reluctant to blame Cuomo, Rockland County Executive Ed Day, a Republican, said, “You don’t rush things like this.”
Until the dregs of the 62-year-old Tappan Zee pose no danger, drivers going both directions must continue to travel on what will eventually be the westbound-only side, which opened in August 2017.
Terry Towle, president of Tappan Zee Constructors, said that engineers confirmed there was no current danger but that the situation was being evaluated “out of an abundance of caution.”
The hazard also led the Coast Guard to close the Hudson River to boat traffic for about 16 hours. The western side of the river was reopened about noon Saturday.
The project has faced problems since its 2013 start. Most notably, four people were injured when a crane toppled onto the Tappan Zee, narrowly missing cars.
During Friday’s ceremony, Cuomo drove his mother, Matilda, across in a 1932 Packard owned by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“I said, ‘Mom, there is no one else on the bridge,” he recalled afterward. “ ‘What could happen?’ ”
Additional reporting by Olivia Bensimon