10. The pedestrian bridges have been causes for community activism

The Liberty Street Bridge.

To avoid pedestrian accidents on the busy roadway, a number of pedestrian bridges were erected for safer travel. Skidmore Owings and Merrill designed the Chambers Street Bridge, which connects Stuyvesant High School and the property of the Borough of Manhattan Community College. The $10 million bridge opened in 1992 with the construction of glass elevators to match handicap access requirements. The Liberty Street Bridge sustained significant damage from 9/11, but was repaired and extended just a few months later. to connect to the new Liberty Park. The original Vesey Street Bridge was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, and a new bridge was constructed in its place in 2003. Following years of complaints about elevator malfunctions and closures due to the construction of One World Trade Center, it was shut down in 2013 and demolished.

Since the Liberty Street and Vesey Street bridges were closed, Battery Park City residents needed a safer way to cross the highway rather immediately. The Rector Street Bridge was installed in August 2002 from pre-fabricated materials, but debates about its demolition were sparked just a decade later. Residents of the community wanted to keep it since it had become a fixture of the neighborhood, but it was torn down and replaced by the West Thames Street Bridge one block south. Also known as the Robert F. Douglass Bridge, the West Thames Street Bridge near the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel was completed by late 2019 after delays in securing funding and weld defects. The modern bridge cost a whopping $45.1 million.

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