High-Tech Design and ITS Innovations on the Cuomo Bridge

Completed in the summer of 2020, the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge is packed with technology to keep traffic moving, ensure users’ safety and preserve the health of the bridge for the next century.

Intelligent Transportation Systems expert Phil Riggio recently shared a glimpse of the bridge’s connected systems with ITS International in the magazine’s November-December 2020 issue.

Riggio, our New York/New Jersey Advanced Technologies Section lead, was the ITS lead on the Cuomo bridge, overseeing the integration of numerous enhancements to the $3.98 billion, 3.1-mile structure. HDR was the lead designer on the project, the largest bridge project in New York history. Designing and building a new bridge, Riggio said, meant the chance to incorporate systems that worked together seamlessly from the beginning.

“We had a unique opportunity for integration: we were completely starting over,” Riggio told the magazine. “One thing we're able to do, because we're building the bridge from scratch, is to design shared infrastructure: the electrical distribution, the power distribution and the communications networks were designed to service all systems on the bridge.”

Those networks included high definition camera systems to monitor the bridge roadway and shared use path, weigh-in-motion systems that measure vehicle weights and traffic volume data, all-electronic tolling that keeps traffic moving without the need for toll plazas and travel time systems to monitor traffic flow. Digital highway signage gives drivers alerts of any traffic disruptions, dynamic lane assignments and speed limit changes. And digital signage on the shared use path alerts pedestrians and bicyclists of status changes.

Read about all of those and more in “Bridging the Gap,” from ITS International.