The Newark Bay Bridge will be replaced - but the planned expansion with two bridges and twice as many lanes has been scrapped.

Will it improve the “Toll of Commuting” in an area known for congestion?

"It's a great victory for New Jersey, for Hudson County, for transit, for the environment," said advocate John Reichman, of Empower NJ.

Many Hudson County mayors celebrated the news last week that Gov. Mikie Sherrill recommended a single bridge replacement over Newark Bay. It's a major downsizing of the original plan. Critics had argued it would attract more drivers and create a bottleneck going into the Holland Tunnel and increase pollution. The new bridge will replace the old one, which was built 70 years ago. "That bridge is structurally deficient and functionally obsolete," said NJ Turnpike Authority Executive Director Kris Kolluri. There are concerns from Bayonne. A handful of residents called into the meeting explaining the traffic woes they handle daily, and their disappointment that the new bridge is now essentially a replacement of the old one, rather than a traffic solution. The project originally included a series of ramps to give trucks direct access to the Bayonne port without using exit 14A. That is still on the table, but isn't included in this batch of funding. "The Turnpike Authority will continue to work with Bayonne to see how we can solve that problem as part of our program," Kolluri said. The previous plan was set to cost $11 billion, but the new $6.7 billion figure is still the costliest project in Turnpike history.