The Port Authority has been spending the largest percentage of its budget working on the World Trade Center [pdf], so they're calling in a private-sector company to help build an entirely new Goethals Bridge. The bridge currently connects Staten Island to New Jersey over Arthur Kill, and new plans would widen it to six 12-foot-wide lanes and include a 10-foot-wide pedestrian and bike walkway. The Port Authority would have to pay back the winning company the estimated $1 billion over the next 30 years, but they would continue to collect tolls on the bridge. "We are buying a bridge, paying for it over a period of time and getting a guaranteed warranty on it," PA spokesman Steve Coleman said. Hey Port Authority, while you're on a shopping spree, we've got another bridge to sell you...

"If this is successful, it could lead to more public-private partnership projects by the Port Authority and to state legislation that would allow more," Richard Anderson of the New York Building Congress told the Daily News. One of the last notable projects completed with both public and private sector funds was the Brooklyn Bridge, but Controller Thomas DiNapoli said the state must proceed with caution. "We have to ensure public assets are not squandered and taxpayers are protected," he said.

The new bridge is slated to open in 2017, after which the old one would be torn down. And this report [pdf] has an awesome depiction of how that would happen. The bridge first opened in 1928 and was named after Major General George Washington Goethals, who supervised the construction of the Panama Canal.