The Bruckner Interchange Open at Last

Some have likened it to the Labyrinth of Cnossus, from which no one escaped. Others have compared it to the battle field at Ypres, and still others— while it was being built—to the columns of Stonehenge. The state calls it simply Bruckner Interchange.

Yesterday, after 20 years of planning, delays and construc tion, the $68‐million, spaghetti like confluence of steel and concrete in the East Bronx be came almost— but not quite — fully operational.

By this morning, according to the State Department of Transportation, all connections between the Bruckner Express way, the Cross Bronx Express way and the Hutchinson River Parkway, as well as the north bound lanes from the Bruckner to the New England Thruway, Iwill be open.

Which leaves only one thin strand—the southbound lanes from the New England Thruway to the Bruckner Expressway— still to be opened, hopefully in the next few weeks. When that strand is completed, one of the most fruitful sources of New York City jokes over the last 15 years—the Bruckner bottle neck—will be gone.

Yesterday only a few work men were on hand, but at its peak last year, the interchange project employed almost 500 men.

More than 25,000 tons of steel went into the interchange, which, at its widest part, car ries 18 lanes of traffic. At one point—and this prompted the allusions to Stonehenge‐230 concrete columns designed to carry 60‐ and 70‐foot‐high ramps jutted up out of the East Bronx mud.

A regular traveler through the interchange described the feeling yesterday of whizzing through the area as “almost ex hilarating” after 15 years of boiling radiators and tempers.

Proposal by Moses

The project really dates to 1951, when Robert Moses, then the city's highway chief, made the first formal proposal for an elevated expressway along Bruckner Boulevard. At the time the Cross Bronx Express way and the New England Thruway were in the planning stage, and it soon became evi dent to the engineers that some day—no one was sure when— a massive interchange would be needed in the area of what was then called the Bruckner Traffic Circle.

Actually Bruckner Circle had been under periodic assault by construction workers for close to a half century. The Hutchinson River Parkway, dating from the nineteen‐twen ties, the Triborough Bridge, completed in 1936, and the Bronx‐Whitestone Bridge, fin ished in 1939, all poured in traffic before World War II.

The Bruckner Expressway project was delayed until 1958 by local objections to an ele vated highway and, later, by money and land‐acquisition problems. By then the Cross Bronx and the New England Thruway were under construc tion. And so was the Throgs Neck Bridge.

The traffic from all con verged on Bruckner Circle and a wholly inadequate Union port drawbridge Just to the west of the circle.

“There were times,” one Greenwich, Conn., driver re called yesterday, “when you could spend an hour crawling around the circle, then have to wait while a sailboat drifted down Westchester Creek and through the open drawbridge.”

Now, the express traffic rushes unimpeded on a high way that is high above the bridge, which still must open for tugboats arid barges as well as sailboats. The drawbridge carries only local street traffic.

Cost Put at $68‐Million

With the sections opened this week and last, plus the main lanes of the Cross Bronx Ex pressway opened almost a year ago, it now is possible to make these connections without de tours:

¶From the Trihorough Bridge via the Bruckner Expressway north to the New England Thruway and to the Hutchinson River Parkway.

¶From the George Washing ton Bridge, via the Cross Bronx Expressway, to the Hutchinson, the New England Thruway and the Throgs Neck and White stone Bridges.

¶From the New England Thruway, via the interchange, and the Cross Bronx, west to the George Washington Bridge and south to the Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges. The link not yet opened is south from the New England Thru way to the Bruckner Express way and the Triborough Bridge.

The cost of the interchange has raised eyebrows, even though the Federal Government will pay 90 per cent of it. In August, 1969, the State Depart ment of Transportation esti mated the cost of the job at $68.15‐million.

Traditionally the lowest bid —the one that gets the job — is about 15 per cent under the estimated cost. But when the bids for the Bruckner Inter change were opened in Septem ber, 1969, there turned out to be only one. It was from Slat tery Associates, Inc., of Queens, a contractor with vast experi ence in building New York roads. The bid was less than one‐half of 1 per cent under the estimate.

The bid was accepted and the job has been completed almost a year ahead of sched ule. The original target date was November, 1973. The De partment of Transportation esti mates that as many as 300,000 motorists a day will use the intersection when it is com pletely opened.