NY Times
November 6, 2008, 5:28 pm
To Rename Triborough for R.F.K., $4 Million
By William Neuman
Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, at a media briefing on the renaming of the Triborough Bridge at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s headquarters. (Photo: John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times)
New York State will have to spend $4 million to replace road signs changing the name of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, a spokesman for the State Department of Transportation said on Thursday.
The spokesman, Adam Levine, acknowledged that the state is in a financial crisis and he said the money would not be spent right away.
He said that it will take time to survey the existing signs and design new ones, and that a contract for the news signs is not expected to be put out for bids until 2011.
“If the fiscal climate does not improve by 2011 the law does give us some flexibility so we will be able to perhaps make some adjustments to the schedule,” Mr. Levine said.
The are 139 signs that must be replaced, he said, on roadways in Manhattan, The Bronx and Queens leading up to the bridge.
In addition, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Transportation said it will spend $100,000 over the next six months to replace 12 large overhead road signs and 40 smaller signs. The reason the cost to the state is so much greater appeared to be because it must replace a larger number of the more costly overhead signs.
The Triborough Bridge has been renamed for Senator Robert F. Kennedy. (Photo: John F. Kennedy Library)
In January, with support from the Kennedy family, Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed renaming the bridge in honor of Mr. Kennedy. A bill ordering the change was passed by the Legislature in June and it was signed into law by Gov. David A. Paterson.
Mr. Paterson and other elected officials are expected to attend a rededication ceremony for the bridge in Queens on Nov. 19.
Mr. Levine said that the state has already put up five signs around the bridge announcing the change in name. Those signs will remain covered until the ceremony. They cost $14,000, he said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the bridge, said that it had to change only nine large signs. The cost for materials, it said, would be $3,500. An authority spokesman did not give an estimate of the labor cost of making the change.
Mr. Levine said the transportation department is considering ways to make the new signs less costly. A shorter name makes for a smaller, lighter and less expensive sign, he said. That could mean that most signs will be as abbreviated as possible, with a likely version reading: “RFK Bridge.”
Already, ads have begun to appear in subway stations, on trains and on buses announcing the name change. The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights arranged for the financing for the ads, which, the authority said, cost $16,000.
The bridge, which opened in 1936, connects the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan. Mr. Kennedy was the United States attorney general when his brother John F. Kennedy was president. He was elected senator from New York in 1964. He was shot to death in Los Angeles, in June 1968, during his campaign for president.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company