While the trestles are being built, "we are heavy into the throes of the design process," says Darrell Waters, president and project director for TZ Constructors. "We are about 20% complete with the design at this time."

The 3.1-mile-long structural-steel bridge will feature 350-ft-long spans. Waters says the bridge's long-span design is not only lighter but modular, allowing for plate-girder segments to be pre-assembled off-site and lifted into place. "We can prefab the steel spans, prefab their piping and their electrical spaces. We can make complete [span] sections without the roadways," says Waters.

Waters says the bridge's flexible design will accommodate any necessary changes. "We don't expect significant changes, maybe tweaks here and there. There are some design contingencies if we need more supporting power."

The New York State Thruway Authority requires the bridge's design to be "mass-transit ready," with extra room and support for potential future rail lines. "There is space provided [for mass transit] in the western and eastern approaches," says Waters. "It will be able to accept a transit system and support a full train, much heavier than a commuter train."

Financing Still Unsettled

Funding plans for the project are still being finalized. The Thruway Authority approved a $500-million short-term bond sale in January that is financing the current work. New York state is seeking a $1.5-billion loan from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation's Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program, which is reviewing the application. The authority has not released details of the whole project's funding plan, but a toll hike is expected.

One cost-saving aspect the state highlighted when picking TZ Constructors was the Left Coast Lifter, a barge-mounted crane with a lifting capacity of 1,725 metric tons. Used on the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, it belongs to American Bridge and Fluor.

The Bay Bridge project has had its share of delays and problems, and Fluor and American Bridge have been criticized over it. But TZ Constructors' Waters doesn't see many parallels with this job. "It was totally different with the Bay Bridge. That one wasn't design-build. We're glad to see New York enact a law to do design-build—it's what let us do this for $3.14 billion and a year shorter."

Thruway Authority Executive Director Thomas Madison echoed this sentiment in a statement to ENR. "For the first time ever, an expedited environmental review was conducted concurrently with a design-build best-value procurement, shaving years off the schedule and hundreds of millions from the anticipated cost of the project. We will continue to work closely with our world-class design and construction team, TZ Constructors, to ensure on-time, on-budget completion of the project."