No problems as Gov. Cuomo Bridge opens to first traffic

TARRYTOWN – The opening of the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge’s first span went off without a hitch early Saturday morning.

At 1:36 a.m., after crews opened a single lane, a New City woman the Thruway Authority identified only as Chelsea was the first person to cross the new, $3.9 billion bridge from Westchester into Rockland.

By 5 a.m., all four lanes were open.

Saturday morning's opening was the first major milestone on the way to completing the Tappan Zee Bridge's replacement. For now, only Rockland-bound traffic will use the new bridge. Westchester-bound drivers will still cross the old bridge until the fall, when they are moved over, too.

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That pattern, where traffic in both directions use a single span, will stay in effect until the entire project is completed sometime in 2018.

Earlier in the night, the festivities brought out several onlookers, who took in the scene from the Broadway overpass in Tarrytown.

Wilfred Mann, a Bronx resident and Mount Vernon firefighter, detoured his trip to Allentown, Pennsylvania to try and be the first to cross.

“I purposely came up this way to cross the bridge,” he said, flanked by about 30 others. “This is just a little bit out of the way, but this is history.”

Not everyone wanted to be the first in line.

“I’m just being nosy,” said Rocco Centrone.

Centrone lives in Tarrytown, a few blocks away from the overpass. Still wearing his hardhat, he works as a crane operator on the project.

“I was on it during the day. It looked really cleaned up,” he said.

Centrone said he would try and make his first trip over the new bridge sometime tomorrow. Still, it was “very exciting” to see the entire project come together.

“There were very cold winters, hot summers, but we made it,” he said. “We did it.”

The process of shifting traffic off the old Tappan Zee Bridge onto the new one started at 9 p.m., when the on-ramp to the Thruway northbound at Exit 9 in Tarrytown was closed, as was the Exit 10 off-ramp in South Nyack.

Crews first closed two lanes, then a third on the Thruway in Tarrytown. At 1:23 a.m., the last car crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge into Rockland County.

Through the rest of the night, crews striped and moved barriers into place in preparation of opening all lanes.

When the first lane opened, traffic was constant, but moving steadily, with the drivers of the first cars honking in celebration.

As the night wore on, there were few slowdowns, but plenty of cars and tractor trailers making their way over the bridge.

"The Thruway Authority thanks motorists for their patience during this work," Khurram Saeed, project spokesman said in a statement. "Motorists are strongly encouraged to follow the reduced speed limit and remain alert as they travel over the new Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge."

Twitter: @coynereports