Bridges into Queens are vulnerable to attacks

More than four years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, one Queens Assemblyman is calling on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to implement additional measures to protect the city’s bridges.
Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, of Astoria, said that several bridges which run into the borough remain vulnerable to attacks because they lack anti-explosive cable shielding. Shielding for the Triborough, Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges was never included in the MTA’s plans to protect the city, but should have been, according to Gianaris.
“Our failure to make progress protecting our sensitive infrastructure is now mimicking our failure to make progress developing Ground Zero,” Gianaris said last week. “More than four years after the worst terrorist attack in history, our inaction is a disgrace and is only inviting future disaster.”
When asked about whether the MTA planned to install anti-explosive cable shielding on the three Queens bridges, Catherine Sweeney of the MTA’s Bridges and Tunnels said, “We don’t comment on security measures.”
There are no cost estimates for the shielding or estimates of the time the installation would take. The material commonly used - a mixture of steel, Kevlar, and ceramics - is touted as equal in strength to steel but lighter, and is used to coat Black Hawk helicopters.
Anti-explosive cable shielding is installed on the MTA’s Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the Port Authority’s George Washington Bridge. In its Recommendations for Bridge and Tunnel Security, the blue-ribbon panel listed coating bridge cables with protective armor as one measure to fight terrorism.
Cable shielding received increased attention after at least one terrorist plot was uncovered that involved severing bridge cables. In June 2003, a man pleaded guilty to planning an attack on the Brooklyn Bridge, in which he planned to severe the bridge’s cables with a blowtorch.