The project would outfit the MTA’s seven bridges and two tunnels — and the Port Authority’s George Washington Bridge — with pulsating, multicolored LED lights. | AP Photo As subways suffer, Cuomo plans choreographed bridge lights

Before a spring meltdown turned into a full-on “summer of hell” for the city’s subways, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was proudly promoting a project to outfit the region's bridges with pulsating, multi-colored LED lights that could provide choreographed light shows in concert with the city’s skyscrapers.

"So, literally, you’ll have bridges all across the New York City area that are choreographed — nothing like this has been done on the planet,” Cuomo told reporters in January.


Now, amid daily reports of infrastructure failures and the governor’s sliding poll numbers, the Cuomo administration will not even say how much the lighting scheme will cost — except to dispute early, internal estimates it could cost more than $350 million — or where that money will come from.

“This is definitively NOT being paid for by the MTA,” emailed Cuomo spokesman Jon Weinstein.

The project, part of a broader plan called “New York Crossings,” would outfit the MTA’s seven bridges and two tunnels — and the Port Authority’s George Washington Bridge — with pulsating, multicolored LED lights that can be choreographed with each other, with the Empire State Building and with One World Trade.

But if not the MTA, who will be paying for it?

"We are considering options,” Weinstein said, “but as it is a project to generate tourism and economic development, and uses technology for energy efficiency, it will be financed by [the New York Power Authority] and parts of the project could likely be funded by [Empire State Development].”

That may come as a surprise to board members of the New York Power Authority, who discussed an MTA lighting project at their meeting in January. They were told the project would be paid for by the MTA, which, like the Power Authority, is effectively controlled by the governor.

In March, the NYPA board was presented with unaudited financial reports showing an LED lighting project for the MTA was slated to cost $216 million.

That the MTA would foot the bill was also the understanding within the agency, according to two knowledgeable sources. Those sources also said the MTA has been working to mitigate costs in order to make the project more politically palatable.

Cuomo officials say that the $216 million is simply a placeholder estimate for the project. Weinstein said he does not know the exact cost but it is "nowhere near" the $350 million estimate.

Critics say the state should be steering that money — whatever the final cost — to the city’s beleaguered transit system, rather than to bridges that already have un-colorful, energy efficient, LED lights.

"We do not have the luxury to apply any of our limited funding to any cosmetic improvements or changes," said Veronica Vanterpool, the executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and an MTA board member. "If it’s not related to state of good repair, if it’s not related to safety, if it’s not related to structural repairs, it needs to fall to the bottom of a long list of priorities."

Cuomo, who has shown a predilection for the aesthetic over the merely functional, has described the project as a power-saving environmental initiative and a stunning visual display that would attract tourists from around the globe.

“Our bridges are some of the most beautiful on the globe, just structurally,” he said during a presentation in October at the New-York Historical Society. “If they were illuminated, they could be breathtaking, and I believe they could be an international tourist attraction.”

In coordination with the announcement, Cuomo released a promotional video, set to the tune of “Empire State of Mind”, showing the MTA’s Throgs Neck, Whitestone, Gil Hodges, Verrazano-Narrows, Henry Hudson, Triborough, and Cross Bay bridges, unadorned.

“LET’S LET THEM SHINE,” declared the video, in white letters superimposed on a bridge glowing yellow. “FOR THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS...EVERY NIGHT FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.”

In April, Cuomo debuted a light show on the state transportation department's Kosciuszko Bridge that he described as the beginning of a New York " Harbor of Lights" that would ultimately encompass all of the MTA's bridges and tunnels.

The governor's office said lighting up just one half of the Kosciuszko Bridge cost $4.5 million.

John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, a watchdog group, questioned the potential returns on that investment.

"Where is the evidence that spending hundreds of millions on Harbor Lights will generate enough tourism to be a good investment?" asked Kaehny. "Maybe making a giant bonfire and burning $300 million in cash would generate even more tourism jobs and economic activity?"

The governor's office has said all of the lights will be in place by May 2018, even as it disputed that the MTA has spent any money on the project so far.

Board materials from the MTA’s bridges and tunnels committee indicate that at least some bridges and tunnels may have begun receiving lighting upgrades, which the governor's office said were part of post-Sandy repairs and at least partly funded by the federal government.

According to a review by Reinvent Albany, the board books suggest that the MTA has thus far spent roughly $40 million on LED infrastructure and decorative towers to “create a unifying theme for the various bridges and tunnels” in the MTA’s portfolio.

In the June 2017 materials, for example, there’s an $11.5 million contract amendment that includes $10.2 million for “the modernization and architectural transformation of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Plazas” of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, including “LED lighting and electrical power distribution upgrades.”

The governor’s office says these and other instances of LED upgrades and architectural embellishments in the MTA’s two tunnels are post-Hurricane Sandy repair projects that have nothing to do with the New York Crossings project, and federal emergency relief funds and the MTA’s prior capital plan are paying for them.

The governor’s office offered the same explanation for the “light beacon fixtures” that appear in those change orders, and the decision to upgrade the white tiles already contained in the post-Sandy reconstruction projects with “a unique tile pattern in accordance with the New York State Branding Guidelines that includes bands of blue and gold tile along the top, middle and bottom.” The tiles add an additional $7.3 million to the costs of the projects, according to Reinvent Albany’s analysis. A Cuomo spokesman described the additional cost as negligible.

The New York Crossings project has undergone at least one significant alteration since it was unveiled.

The Port Authority has withdrawn the George Washington Bridge from the project, said Port Authority spokesman Ron Marsico.

"Confirmed that we’re not lighting the GWB in that way," he emailed.

He declined to say why.