Brooklyn, NY – The Biden Bridge? Is $500M Paint Job Too Far?

Brooklyn, NY – Work will begin soon on repainting the Brooklyn Bridge and expanding its on-ramps, a project that Vice President Biden and Mayor Bloomberg joined together last week to announce.

To those of us who use the bridge regularly and have bemoaned its decrepit state, or who have waited as traffic inched onto the bridge from the FDR Drive, this is something to celebrate. But for the federal and New York taxpayers who will wind up footing the bill, the cost is staggering.

Consider: Even after adjusting for inflation, the $508 million project is $100 million more than it cost to build the bridge from scratch back in 1883.

What’s the difference?

The original bridge – a marvel of engineering at the time – was built and owned by a private company, albeit one with some government backing; the bridge is now owned by the city government. And between 1883 and today, the city, state and federal governments have passed all kinds of onerous laws that make building, painting or repairing anything a complicated and costly process.

The Web site of the city’s Department of Transportation offers some clues to why it would cost $500 million to paint and improve a bridge. At that price, you’d think, you could hire 200 union painters at $1 million apiece, tell them to work for a year and buy their own paint, spend another $100 million on expanding the on-ramps, and still have $200 million left over in profits to spend on work by less expensive painters, like, say, Pablo Picasso.

Here’s how the city describes the project: “Dust collection, vacuum and recycle units will be employed to minimize environmental air quality risks, and there will be continuous air monitoring during operations. All painting work will be conducted in accordance to the U.S. Environmental Protection Act and NYS Department of Environmental Conservation requirements. Noise generated by these units will conform to the NYC Noise Code standards adopted in 2007 … Lead paint is removed in a reverse-pressurized (negative air) containment system. Paint operations are monitored as per NYC, NYS and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards. Monitoring is conducted by an experienced environmental consultant firm retained for this purpose … We will publish brochures in Spanish and Chinese, and can accommodate any other community requests for additional languages.”

In other words, the money isn’t all going to bridge painters or builders. Some of it is going to Spanish and Chinese brochure-writers, and some to an environmental consulting firm.

Then there’s this. The painters and builders who will do the work on the bridge will be making a lot more than the $2.25 a day that original bridge-builders made, even after adjusting for inflation. City prevailing wage law dictates that painters using power tools on city public works projects earn $51.50 an hour, plus a “supplemental benefit rate” of $29.16 an hour. Time-and-a-half overtime kicks in after seven hour days, or on weekends.

No one is in favor of pollution or starvation wages, and of course even New Yorkers with limited English skills should be able to access information about a major construction project that affects them. But it all comes at a price – $222 million in federal funds at a time when Washington is staggering under practically unprecedented levels of deficits and national debt, with the rest to be shouldered by New York City and state at a time when those budgets, too, are under severe strain.

The cost is something to consider the next time lawmakers feel the urge to pass a law setting ever-higher standards for painting, noise, wages or foreign-language availability. If such laws had existed back in the 1880s, we’d probably all still be traveling back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn by ferry boats.