Residents near a stretch of the Riverside Drive Viaduct in Washington Heights complain that a stalled construction project is putting their lives at risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a heart attack,\u201d Jack Cole, a resident, said. \u201cI was in pain. Heart attacks are pretty painful.\u201d<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Residents near a stretch of the Riverside Drive Viaduct in Washington Heights complain that a stalled construction project is putting their lives at risk
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Many gathered near the construction site on Friday above the Henry Hudson Highway between 153rd and 161st streets to demand repair work on the viaduct be completed
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The multi-million-dollar project was slated to be completed in 2022, but City Councilmember Sean Abreu said work has not taken place since last year, after about 75% of the work was done<\/p>\n
Cole said idle construction work delayed emergency workers in getting to him when he went into cardiac arrest last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey tried to get to get to us this way and they couldn\u2019t and they ended up driving around the block,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cole\u2019s neighbor, stroke neurologist Elizabeth Miller, said the problem can cost lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may not sound like such a big delay to have a four-minute for a stroke, but for every minute of delay you lose 2 million neurons in your brain,\u201d Dr. Miller said.<\/p>\n
Miller and Cole are among hundreds of residents who have to travel through a maze of construction fences and barriers, can\u2019t use sidewalks or their building\u2019s main entrance.<\/p>\n
Many gathered near the construction site on Friday above the Henry Hudson Highway between 153rd and 161st streets to demand repair work on the viaduct be completed.<\/p>\n
Judlau, one of the city\u2019s largest contractors, began repairing the viaduct in 2019 after the city\u2019s Department of Transportation hired it to replace corroding steel and decking.<\/p>\n
The multi-million-dollar project was slated to be completed in 2022, but City Councilmember Sean Abreu said work has not taken place since last year, after about 75% of the work was done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe DOT has gone silent,\u201d Abreu said. \u201cNo plan, no timeline, no public communication, no accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contractor has accused the DOT of delaying work, refusing to cover the cost of inflation and adding more work to the project.<\/p>\n
The two sides are now embroiled in a lawsuit.<\/p>\n
In a statement, a spokesperson for Judlau said the company never abandoned the job but, \u201cJudlau has notified the City that sidewalk sheds are blocking access to the site and has repeatedly raised the issue of the sidewalk sheds at bi-weekly and monthly meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a separate statement, a city DOT spokesperson said, \u201cNYC DOT disagrees with the contractor\u2019s comments and will respond as appropriate through the litigation. We will continue to push to get the project completed as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many residents said they\u2019re really concerned the lawsuit between the construction company and the city could delay this work further.<\/p>\n
Many of them demand that the city find another contractor to complete the work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents near a stretch of the Riverside Drive Viaduct in Washington Heights complain that a stalled construction project…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[25,1084,297,75,84,83,9,24,12,26,63,27,296,142,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-15777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-app-traffic-transit","10":"tag-app-traffic-and-transit","11":"tag-manhattan","12":"tag-manhattan-headlines","13":"tag-manhattan-news","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-nia-clark","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-traffic-and-transit","21":"tag-transit","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}