Roosevelt Island Bridge Closure Advisory To End Tonight - Not Soon Enough For Some

Image of Roosevelt Island Bridge From Bridge and Tunnel Club

Hopefully, tonight will be the end of the preventive maintenance work being done on the Roosevelt Island Bridge for a while. According to the RIOC Advisory:

Please be advised the NYC DOT Bridge Operations Unit will be performing openings on the Roosevelt Island Bridge for preventive maintenance. They will be conducting these openings nightly from August 11, 2009 to August 13, 2009 and August 17, 2009 to August 18, 2009 between the hours of 8:00 P.M. and 4:30 A.M.
Please be advised that each test opening will take anywhere from 8 to 10 minutes to be completed. The test openings will be appropriately spaced to prevent the least amount of disturbance to the vehicular and pedestrian traffic traversing the bridge.

A reader Jesse was not very pleased with what occurred last week at the Roosevelt Island Bridge. Jesse writes:

8 to 10 minutes? Try an hour on Wednesday night. There were at least 30 Roosevelt Islanders stranded on the LIC side between midnight and 1 a.m., and nobody had any information. Traffic was backed up on both sides of the bridge, with horns blaring right under the bedroom windows of residents of Manhattan Park, Eastwood and Westview.

This was a total disaster, and horribly mismanaged by both DOT and the RIOC, whose leadership could do much, much more to communicate with Island residents, both before and during such a shutdown.

Add it to the long list of Shane's shames.

Roosevelt Island 360 Tweets a picture of traffic backed up on Main Street due to either ramp construction or Roosevelt Island Bridge closure.

NY 1 reports on a September 2007 incident at the Roosevelt Island Bridge which left motorists stranded for hours late at night for which the preventive maintenance work is presumably being done to prevent from happening again.

Drivers trying to cross the Roosevelt Island Bridge overnight sat for six hours Friday because the bridge was stuck in the up position.

The span got stuck in an up position at around 11 p.m., leaving a gap in the roadway that kept traffic from crossing....

UPDATE - 3:55 PM - RIOC President Steve Shane replies:

To Jesse,your blogger poster, who commented on my list of "shames", be advised that among other things that I do not command is the operation of the New York City Department of Traffic and their testing schedule on the Roosevelt Island Bridge. DOT posted notices, we posted them and displayed them on our website, as did you. Public disruption is unavoidable in matters of this kind, but none the less, a pain when experienced. If I controlled DOT, things might be different, but I do not.

UPDATE - 8/19 -Unfortunately, it seems as though Roosevelt Island residents will have to suffer through some more days this August with DOT performing late night maintenance on the Roosevelt Island Bridge. Just received this email advisory from RIOC (advisory has not yet appeared on RIOC's Advisory Web Page):

Please be advised the NYC DOT Bridge Operations Unit will be performing openings on the Roosevelt Island Bridge for preventive maintenance. They will be conducting these openings on August 20, 2009 to August 21, 2009 between the hours of 8:30 P.M. and 4:00 A.M. Please be advised that each test opening will take anywhere from 8 to 10 minutes to be completed. The test openings will be appropriately spaced to prevent the least amount of disturbance to the vehicular traffic traversing the bridge.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Roosevelt Island Operating Corp Advisories Group