Renaming Infrastructure Is Not Cheap

A lot of plastic bags, in fact:

New York State will have to spend $4 million to replace road signs changing the name of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, a spokesman for the State Department of Transportation said on Thursday.

The spokesman, Adam Levine, acknowledged that the state is in a financial crisis and he said the money would not be spent right away.

He said that it will take time to survey the existing signs and design new ones, and that a contract for the news signs is not expected to be put out for bids until 2011.

“If the fiscal climate does not improve by 2011 the law does give us some flexibility so we will be able to perhaps make some adjustments to the schedule,” Mr. Levine said.

The are 139 signs that must be replaced, he said, on roadways in Manhattan, The Bronx and Queens leading up to the bridge.

In addition, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Transportation said it will spend $100,000 over the next six months to replace 12 large overhead road signs and 40 smaller signs. The reason the cost to the state is so much greater appeared to be because it must replace a larger number of the more costly overhead signs.

Location Scout: Triborough Bridge.