New $70M NY-Vt. bridge over Lake Champlain opens

CROWN POINT, N.Y. — Hundreds of people poured onto Lake Champlain Bridge on Monday, taking photos and laying on the center line in sheer joy over the opening of the new span and the reconnection of the communities on either side of the lake.

The first vehicle to cross from Crown Point to West Addison, Vt., after the ceremonial ribbon cutting was a 1929 Pierce Arrow, a classic vehicle built in New York the same year the previous bridge was completed.

New York Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin stood on the running boards.

The new bridge is a welcome relief for residents whose lives were upended when the old bridge closed in October 2009, after engineers determined it was unsafe.

A free, 24-hour ferry was put into place to carry commuters and others back and forth, but it didn't have the convenience of the bridge.

"They lost businesses. They called me in the middle of the night crying because they had traveled hours and hours to get to their jobs. This whole community was devastated without this bridge," Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward, a Republican whose district represents the New York side of the bridge, said of her constituents. "Today your life begins again."

New York Department of Transportation engineers had been eying the bridge for replacement or renovation right up until it was deemed too unsafe to use. Two months after it closed it was destroyed by a controlled explosion in late December 2009. Construction on the new bridge began the following spring after the debris was pulled out of Lake Champlain.

The communities on both sides pressed their elected and state officials to replace the bridge as quickly as possible. Typically, designing and building a bridge like the new one would take eight years.

"To replace the bridge that was here before and be here where we are today, in two years-time, is nothing short of a miracle," Duffy said.

The $76 million "network tied art bridge" had been scheduled to open in early October, but extreme weather earlier this year caused the delay.

Before the ceremony, seats of honor were given to the so-called "29ers," people who attended the opening of the previous bridge that New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt presided over.

"I never thought it would happen," said Pearl McMurtry, 88, of Crown Point who worked in Middlebury, Vt., for years when she was younger and crossed the bridge every day.