[9] However, a vote on the planned Liberty Bridge was never taken, as it was blocked by then-Congressman Fiorello H. La Guardia, who believed that a public necessity should not be provided by private interests.

[38] The city submitted its request to the War Department in July 1948,[39] and a commission composed of three United States Armed Forces branches was convened to solicit the public's opinions on the proposed span.

[48] Staten Islanders viewed the project cautiously, since the Narrows Bridge would provide a connection to the rest of the city, but could also cause traffic congestion through the borough.

[52] In a measure passed in March 1955, the city gained control over the approval process for several tasks related to the Narrows bridge's construction, including land acquisition.

[61] Moses also proposed expanding Brooklyn's Gowanus Expressway and extending it to the Narrows Bridge by way of Seventh Avenue, which would require cutting through the middle of Bay Ridge.

[66] After holding a hearing for concerned Bay Ridge residents, the Board of Estimate affirmed the Narrows Bridge plan in October 1958,[63] without any objections.

[73] However, now-governor Rockefeller vetoed the Belt Parkway bill,[74] and in March 1959, the Board of Estimate officially condemned land along Seventh Avenue to make way for the Gowanus Expressway extension to the Narrows Bridge.

[79] To raise money for construction, Rockefeller signed a bill that would remove the 4% ceiling on the interest rates for the securities that the TBTA was selling to pay for the bridge.

[87] A 1,000-ton World War I monument on the Brooklyn side, within the path of the future Seventh Avenue approach, was placed atop rolling logs and shifted 370 ft (110 m).

[2]: 144  The Staten Island side's caisson was sunk 105 ft (32 m) into the water, and necessitated the dredging of 81,000 cubic yards (62,000 m3) of sand and assorted muck.

[100] Then, these components were combined in a Bayonne steelworks 5 mi (8 km) from the bridge site, and after the pieces of each slab were assembled, they were floated to the Narrows via barge.

[120] The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) created a bus route across the bridge to connect Victory Boulevard in Staten Island with the Bay Ridge–95th Street subway station in Brooklyn.

[137] Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable derided the new flag as a "simple-minded, vainglorious proposal" and asked, "Does anyone really want to spend $850,000 to upstage the Statue of Liberty?

[142] The one-way toll was initially intended to be part of a six-month pilot program,[143] but resulted in permanent changes to traffic flows on the Verrazzano Bridge.

A few weeks after the Baltimore bridge collapse, a large container ship had propulsion problems near the Verrazzano in early April and was assisted by several tugboats.

After Robert Moses turned down the initial proposal, the society undertook a public relations campaign to re-establish Giovanni da Verrazzano's largely forgotten reputation and to promote the idea of naming the bridge for him.

[186] The Italian Historical Society later successfully lobbied to get a bill introduced in the New York State Assembly to name the bridge for the explorer.

In April 1958, governor W. Averell Harriman announced that he would propose naming the Narrows Bridge after Verrazzano in honor of the explorer's voyage to New York Harbor in 1524.

[71]: 33  The Italian Historical Society's published references to the bridge's name all contained two "z"s.[195] In June 2016, St. Francis College student Robert Nash started a petition to spell Giovanni da Verrazzano's name on the bridge correctly, with two "z"s.[153][196][197][198] The petition gained support from politicians including New York state senators Martin Golden and Andrew Lanza.

[199] In December 2016, Golden and Lanza sent letters to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Thomas F. Prendergast, in which they recommended that the bridge's name be spelled correctly.

A bill that passed in the New York State Senate in May 2019 would give the discounted rate to Brooklyn residents with E-ZPass who cross at least 10 times per month.

[215] Governor Mario Cuomo signed another law to give Staten Island residents discounted tolls in 1983, after years of petitioning and opposition from his two predecessors.

In 1985, U.S. Representative Guy V. Molinari co-sponsored a bill that would require the MTA to collect the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge's toll in the Staten Island-bound direction only.

[142] In December of that year, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that prohibited the MTA from collecting tolls from Brooklyn-bound vehicles,[217] under penalty of a loss of highway funding.

[225] In 2019, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of a federal appropriations bill, which would repeal the bridge's one-way-toll mandate and allow half of the then-current toll to be applied to both directions.

[1] In 2011, advocacy group Transportation for America rated the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge as New York's most dangerous, because of the combination of deterioration and the number of people who cross it per day.

[286] In 1997, the DCP released its study, which found that two footpaths running between the suspender ropes along the upper level, separated for pedestrian and cyclist use, would cost a minimum of $26.5 million.

Dave Lutz, the director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition nonprofit, stated that after the September 11 attacks, Staten Islanders walked home along the bridge's roadway.

[288] In spring 2013 the committee began an online petition that generated more than 2,500 signatures, as well as an organizational sign-on letter with the support of 16 regional and local advocacy and planning organizations.

[169] The MTA estimated that a dedicated multiple-use pathway would cost $400 million due to the need for a minimum width to accommodate a fire engine and construction of entrance and exit ramps.