Earlier this month the Port Authority released renderings of a bridge that will replace the outmoded Goethals Bridge connecting New Jersey and Staten Island. The design, which includes six 12-foot lanes, shoulders, a bike and pedestrian walkway, and space for a potential future transit line, is the most recent in a long run of changes to a project which has gradually evolved for the better.

The Goethals Bridge has been described (by the NY Daily News) as “obsolete almost since the day it was built,” with four 10-foot lanes (narrow by modern standards), no shoulders, and a small walkway unpleasantly close to traffic. But most found the Port Authority’s proposed cure worse than the disease. Throughout the 1990s, Tri-State joined a chorus of NYC and NJ residents, elected officials, and civic groups opposed to a plan to “twin” the Goethals that would have resulted in two 4-lane bridges and was part of a longer-range vision which included a widening of the Staten Island Expressway (see, for example, MTR #s 130, 141, 242).

That advocacy paid off. By 2006, the Port Authority had reduced the size of the planned bridge or bridges to six total traffic lanes. It also helped to reinstate a freight rail link between Staten Island and New Jersey, reducing truck traffic on the Goethals (see MTR #s 533, 541). In 2007 the twin plan was dropped entirely.

The new design has won praise from the Staten Island Advance in an editorial and has thus far avoided the tremendous opposition which sunk the 8-lane plan of the 1990s. A Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project will be released this winter and should show to what extent the project has truly changed. Construction on the bridge is projected to begin in 2011.

Renderings of the replacement bridge are available here.