The feds will be footing more of the bill for a new bridge over Newtown Creek, putting $15 million towards the replacement of the 119-year-old Grand St. Bridge on the Brooklyn-Queens border, Sen. Chuck Schumer announced Wednesday.
“So many of our bridges are very old,” Schumer (D-NY) told the Daily News. “The Grand St. bridge is a vintage example of this — it’s more than a century old.
“These $15 million are going to give it a long overdue overhaul,” he said, adding that the “investment means a safer bridge, good-paying construction jobs, and better infrastructure for bikes and pedestrians.”
The $15 million comes from a subset of money in the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law earmarked for resiliency projects.
The bridge, built in 1903, connects East Williamsburg to Maspeth. It suffered mechanical and electrical damage during hurricane Sandy in 2012, which damaged the swing bridge’s ability to make way for boat traffic on Newtown Creek, creating a cargo bottleneck, a Department of Transportation spokesperson said.
An inspection of the bridge last year lead to the institution of a 13-ton weight restriction in November 2023.
The bridge is also ill-suited to modern use, officials said. The narrow span leaves little space for pedestrian and cyclist traffic.
The replacement span, by contrast, will have modern-width lanes along with space for bike lanes and wide pedestrian paths. The new bridge will also feature elevated mechanical and electrical infrastructure to better protect it from storm surges.
“This federal funding will help replace a 119-year-old bridge that was severely damaged during Superstorm Sandy in 2012, it will facilitate the movement of maritime freight, and it will ensure continued mobility through new separated bike paths and wider pedestrian paths,” said Mona Bruno, a DOT spokeswoman.
The total replacement project, which is expected to cost $300 million, is already slated for $140 million in federal funding, city officials involved in the project told The News. The remaining $145 million will be paid for out of city funds.
Bruno said that a connection between Brooklyn and Queens over Newtown Creek would be provided during construction, but it wasn’t clear if that would be the extant bridge or some other means of transit.
The timeline on the start and completion of the project remained unclear Wednesday.
