DOT Needs To Replace Dozens Of Signs For Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge Because Of One Missing Letter

Gov. Andrew Cuomo drives a 1932 Packard as he officially opens the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, in Nyack, N.Y. in 2018.

If you live off the G Train, you may have noticed a prominent signage error at the Broadway station. It says “BRODAWAY” instead of “BROADWAY”—a small but noticeable misspelling—and has been this way for quite some time. I sometimes wonder how much money and time it would cost to fix this, and then I remember all the much better ways that money could be used (especially when it comes to our rickety subway system).

This line of logic has evidently been lost on the state Department of Transportation, which is currently in the process of altering or replacing dozens of signs pointing the way to the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge because of a far less noticeable error, as Lohud.com reports. The mistake? The original signs are missing the late governor’s middle initial, the letter “M”; they simply refer to it as the “Gov. Mario Cuomo Bridge.” What would the bridge’s namesake think? According to Cuomo’s younger son, Chris Cuomo, he would not have liked having a bridge named after him in the first place.

Of course, the controversial legislation to name the new bridge as such was spearheaded by the late governor’s other son, current governor Andrew Cuomo, to honor his dad, who died in 2015. The bridge over the Hudson River, connecting Westchester and Rockland counties, replaces the old Tappan Zee Bridge, which was finally demolished earlier this year.

There’s no word on exactly how much the sign replacements will cost taxpayers; for now, the DOT is “patching over existing signs, while the Thruway Authority—which has fewer signs affected—is using patches and printing new signs,” the Lohud.com report notes. The earliest signs and overlays for the new bridge—with the middle initial omitted—appeared in the Lower Hudson Valley last fall.

"We are currently in the process of installing overlays on existing signs for the sake of uniformity across the state highway and Thruway systems, and to ensure every sign reflects the official name of the new bridge," DOT spokesperson Joseph Morrissey said in a statement.

In a somewhat similar case, the current Governor Cuomo signed a bill last year to correct a longtime misspelling of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to Staten Island. Maybe our next governor will sign a bill to hire some copy editors.