When I cycled onto the Kosciuszko Bridge in New York City last April with Mr. Streetfilms, Clarence Eckerson, it felt strangely familiar. Although I was certain I’d never seen it before—this being my very first visit to New York—there was something about the bridge’s design that resonated. The cable-stayed structure, the towering pylons, the stark concrete, the noise from the adjacent freeway, and the width of the cycle track all reminded me of a bridge in the Netherlands: the Martinus Nijhoffbrug near Zaltbommel alongside the A2 motorway.
For this extra post on October’s fifth Wednesday, I decided to juxtapose my video of cycling across these two bridges. Naturally, there are many differences between them, yet even the video seems to convey that the overall experience is remarkably similar.
The main span of the Dutch bridge is 66 metres longer but it is roughly 23 metres narrower, carrying six lanes of traffic compared to New York’s nine. The height felt very similar, though the New York bridge is 9 metres higher above the water. That water, in New York, is “just” a creek, whereas the bridge near Zaltbommel spans the Waal river, which holds most of the Rhine’s flow—one of Europe’s major rivers, both in size and importance as a shipping route. One of the most noticeable differences while cycling across the two bridges was the bumpiness: the New York bridge was far rougher to cycle on than its Dutch counterpart.
I think the similarities between the bridges are coincidental; I don’t believe one design inspired the other. After all, there are only so many ways to construct a cable-stayed bridge. Still, the experience of crossing them felt so unexpectedly similar that I decided to share it in this post’s video.
In the list below, you’ll find exact details for each bridge. One aspect that stood out was the difference in cost. I can’t see how the differences in length and width alone could account for the fact that the US bridge cost over ten times more than its Dutch counterpart! According to Statistics Netherlands, the 90 million guilders from 1996 would be the equivalent of 78 million euros today, which converts to roughly 84.3 million dollars. That is still far less than the 873 million dollars it cost to construct the Kosciuszko Bridge. I can understand why many of my US followers react sceptically when I mention infrastructure costs here. Apparently, the cost structures are vastly different on either side of the Atlantic.
Kosciuszko Bridge
- Location: USA, NYC, Queens – Brooklyn
- Crosses: Newtown Creek
- Opened: 2017-2019
- Type: Cable-stayed bridge
- Cost: $873m
- Longest span: 190m
- Width: Approx. 62m
- Clearance: 27m
- Daily traffic: 162,581 (2021)
Martinus Nijhoffbrug
- Location: Netherlands, Zaltbommel
- Crosses: Waal River
- Opened: 1996
- Type: Cable-stayed bridge
- Cost: ƒ90m in 1996
(equivalent of €78m/$84.3m in 2024) - Longest span: 256m
- Width: Approx. 39m
- Clearance: 18m
- Daily traffic: 145.300 (2023)
I hope you find this brief comparison interesting and enjoyable to watch!
BICYCLE DUTCH 
Mark,
Thanks for another great post.
The difference in construction cost you’ve found is endemic. American infra is unreasonably expensive. Footbridges in NL that cost 100,000 euros would cost 8 times as much in the US; so we hardly build footbridges. In Boston, we’ve been waiting for decades for a missing link in our riverside bike path, a bridge to carry it over the train tracks; we wait for decades because the cost will be more than $20 M. Likewise with rail / public transport: to expand our Green Line by 8 km with 7 stations, all built in an existing rail right-of-way, cost 2.2 Billion dollars.
Peter
Thanks for your comment, Peter. While I am aware of the significant cost differences between the US and the Netherlands, I’m still surprised each time I see such direct comparisons. These costs hinder the US from building attractive, essential, and beautiful infrastructure.