New Tappan Zee Bridge: Towers completed; video

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a gaggle of dignitaries gathered on a stretch of the new Tappan Zee Bridge Tuesday afternoon to commemorate the topping off of the main span towers and to hail the progress of construction.

Standing where the main span will eventually connect with the approach, Cuomo said the progress has been made "in an incredibly short period of time, under very difficult circumstances."

“This bridge has really captured the imagination of people,” the governor said. “You can see it in their eyes and their face that they’re really captivated by it, the size of it, the power of it, the magnitude of it."

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According to bridge officials, 90 percent of support structures have been placed, more than 1,000 piles have been driven, 3,000-plus road deck panels have been installed and roughly one-third of the 192 stay cables have been anchored to the main span towers.

Jamey Barbas, the project director for the $3.9 billion bridge project, said crews would be topping off the Westchester-bound main span towers with the final concrete pour this week.

The bridge is set to be completed in its entirety sometime in 2018, they said, and is on budget.

“As you can see building this bridge is a massive undertaking, but we’re making progress," Barbas said.

Cuomo said the old Tappan Zee Bridge reminded him of "20 years of broken promises," while the new bridge is a sign that you can get difficult things done if when you "reject the naysayers, when you reject the doubt, when you reject the insecurity."

He connected it to planned projects to renovate LaGuardia Airport and Penn Station along with the nearby Farley Station project.

"Now we’re going to build a new LaGuardia Airport. Why? Because its the same as the old bridge. It was 20 years of failure, LaGuardia. Then we’re going to restore Penn Station. Why? Because it was the same thing. It was 20 years of failure," he said. "We believe we can because we are New York."

“New York State leads the way once again for this nation and I’m proud to be part of it," Cuomo added.

The first span of the bridge, according to officials, is still scheduled to open sometime in the spring or summer of 2017. At that point, all traffic will be diverted to it so crews can work on demolishing the current bridge and linking the southbound span-to-be to the Westchester and Rockland landings.

Twitter: @coynereports