Patchogue Holbrook Road Bridge Project Won't Be Complete Until Summer

UPDATE Wednesday, March 29: The DOT website has been updated to reflect an "estimated substantial completion date" of May 30, 2017.

Some local residents had been holding out hope that despite visual evidence to the contrary, the Patchogue Holbrook Road bridge project would be finished by the "estimated substantial completion date" of March 28 listed on the New York State Department of Transportation's website.

Those dreams came crashing down Thursday as a DOT spokesman told Patch that the date listed on the website was just an estimate and is no longer accurate.

"More realistically, before the summer of 2017," said Ed Hearn, the acting public information officer for the DOT's Long Island Region, of when construction may finally come to an end on the bridge over the Long Island Expressway that has been driving local residents insane for years.

The contract for the now $10 million project was awarded to West Babylon-based ALAC Contracting Corporation in April 2014. The original contract completion date was May 30, 2016.

Concerned residents attended a meeting at the Sachem Public Library in June 2016 regarding the construction. A DOT representative told the crowd that the project has been affected by a series of delays, mainly caused by accidents: the bridge had been struck four times over the past two years by trucks, according to a recap of the meeting by the Lake Ronkonkoma Civic Organization.

The DOT was hopeful at that time that construction would be complete by the end of 2016 and a DOT representative said that the contractor would have to pay penalties if the work wasn't fully completed by the end of the year.

Hearn told Patch that ALAC was fined $160,000 in January. Monthly penalties vary based on required construction inspection efforts (essentially, the contractor is required to reimburse the state for the cost of inspection staff), he said.