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Major project on Harlem River Lift Bridge will close structure to marine traffic
“… minimize affects to Metro-North customers.” Should be “effects.”
The two-year project has been scheduled to take full advantage of the six-month marine closure and minimize affects to Metro-North customers.
I’m not Grammar Girl but affect means to influence or produce a change in something. Effect means the result of the influence. So where the closure will minimize the “influence” or have little “change” for the customers and they are talking pre-inconvenience and not post- inconvenience; I believe affect is correct.
I recently took the Circle Line cruise around Manhattan and went under several draw bridges on the Harlem River. A few other opening road bridges have recently been replaced by very expensive new bridges.
I spoke to the tour narrator and he told me that the bridges are hardly ever opened and the notification required is so long (I think is was 3 - 4 hrs) that it’s quicker to simply go around the point of Manhattan for most boats.
He also said the Harlem River is rather shallow and getting shallower and can’t be navigated by anything very large anyway.
So the expense to replace or upgrade these bridges seems to be a huge waste of money. $47 million and two years for a bridge that may never be opened.
Our government at work I guess.
Metro-North is trying to minimize what happens to its customers, so “affects” is incorrect. How did the bridge closure affect (verb) the customers? The effect (noun) of the bridge closure was to inspire the customers to write letters to “Trains”. The writer could have said that Metro-North wanted to “minimize the effects of the closure on its customers” and that would have been fine, or they could have said that they were “…trying to affect (their) customers as little as possible”.
Thank you, Mr. Schurman.
Got my first, exciting view of Manhattan from that bridge in 1965 from aboard NYC’s #16 on a sunny August morning. Views from the Hell Gate on NH and rides under the Hudson on PRR would come later, but that Harlem River crossing sticks in my mind. I didn’t know the bridge was so relatively new, at just 60 years.
“700 trains each weekday”? Really? In a 19 hour day (5 am to midnight), that comes to an average of more than one train every two minutes.
There are four tracks with each track bidirectional - two in each direction normally but three and one during rush hours. I expect during peak periods better than a train a minute crosses that bridge.
I think it’s a shame they have to spend all that money a mechanism that’s hardly ever used. It’s not like its the only alternative. Larger boats go the other way around anyway.
Too bad the Trains editor doesn’t know the difference between “affect” and “effect”! Sloppy!