The objective of this book is to suggest solutions to our 21st Century reional transportation problems. The author's proposals address a variety of regional transportation concepts, in case study format, regarding the current dilemma of how to implement improvements to the Tappan Zee Bridge. The Tappan Zee Bridge is a major transportation link to the New York City Metropolitan Regional Area as well as to the New England Regional Area. This delemma epitomizes transportation issues faced by other large regional metropolitan areas throughout the world. To successfully resolve the questions posed requires a systematic and coordinated approach for managing 21st Century traffic. The need for a comprehensive transportation plan was brought into focus by the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, which demonstrated the need for alternative transportation systems within the New York City Metropolitan Regional Area.

The Code of Federal Regulations is the codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government.

The State of New York is now building one of the world’s longest, widest, and most expensive bridges—the new Tappan Zee Bridge—stretching more than three miles across the Hudson River, approximately thirteen miles north of New York City. In Politics Across the Hudson, urban planner Philip Plotch offers a behind-the-scenes look at three decades of contentious planning and politics centered around this bridge, recently renamed for Governor Mario M. Cuomo, the state's governor from 1983 to 1994. He reveals valuable lessons for those trying to tackle complex public policies while also confirming our worst fears about government dysfunction. Drawing on his extensive experience planning megaprojects, interviews with more than a hundred key figures—including governors, agency heads, engineers, civic advocates, and business leaders—and extraordinary access to internal government records, Plotch tells a compelling story of high-stakes battles between powerful players in the public, private, and civic sectors. He reveals how state officials abandoned viable options, squandered hundreds of millions of dollars, forfeited more than three billion dollars in federal funds, and missed out on important opportunities. Faced with the public’s unrealistic expectations, no one could identify a practical solution to a vexing problem, a dilemma that led three governors to study various alternatives rather than disappoint key constituencies. Politics Across the Hudson continues where Robert Caro’s The Power Broker left off and illuminates the power struggles involved in building New York’s first major new bridge since the Robert Moses era. Plotch describes how one governor, Andrew Cuomo, shrewdly overcame the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of onerous environmental regulations, vehement community opposition, insufficient funding, interagency battles, and overly optimistic expectations.