A contractor-led initiative to build a long-discussed connector between Connecticut and Long Island, New York, would cost $50 billion to be paid for with toll revenues and state, federal and private funding.
During a press conference June 15 called by the Connecticut-Long Island Initiative, housing developer Stephen Shapiro put forth a plan that would create a 10- to 12-mile bridge with an underwater tunnel and artificial island on each side. The resulting 14- to 15-mile structure would connect Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Sunken Meadow Parkway on the northern coast of Long Island.
Shapiro said the bridge would help cut the infamously long travel times between Connecticut and Long Island, boost regional economies and create thousands of jobs. The Queens-Bronx Parkway, which serves as the primary connection between Connecticut and Long Island, sees around 400,000 travelers per day, according to Shapiro.
The bridge concept is most similar, according to Shapiro, to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel project in Virginia. The final structure would carry four lanes of traffic in each direction for passenger vehicles and a light passenger rail and would not interfere with existing maritime routes.
Powered byThe final proposed price tag comes in at $50 billion, which would include $1.25 billion from each state, a $22.5 billion federal TIFIA loan, and $25 billion in private funding. Tolls would pay back those loans in 15 to 17 years, according to Shapiro, and then generate $3 billion to $4 billion in revenue annually for both states.
Shapiro’s proposal assumes the final bridge will have a $39 passenger vehicle toll, a $50 truck toll and bring in $250 million in annual rail revenue.
The first step for the project, according to Shapiro, is to secure a feasibility study from New York and Connecticut legislators during their next session. Construction could feasibly begin in five to 10 years and be complete in 15 to 20 years, according to Inside Investigator.
One of the most significant recent steps taken toward a Long Island-Connecticut was a 2017 feasibility study by WSP for the New York Department of Transportation, which examined three possible connections on the west, central and eastern portions of the northern Long Island coast.
The hypothetical central alignment from the 2017 study, which connects the same areas as the CTLI’s current proposal, was estimated at the time to cost between $13 billion and $31.2 billion depending on different proposed designs.
Proposals to build a bridge-tunnel connecting Long Island to Connecticut date back as far as 1938, according to the 2017 feasibility study, including three different proposals in the 1960s.
