Only two contractors bid the biggest Long Island job on NYSDOT's March 26 letting, and they did not see the same job. The Posillico/H&L joint venture put in $31,755,117.17 on contract D265742, asphalt pavement resurfacing on the Long Island Expressway (I-495) from the Queens/Nassau county line to Exit 40 in Nassau County. Tully Construction Company Inc. bid $44,482,378.31. That is a $12,727,261.14 gap, 40.08% over the low. With two envelopes, the low-to-high spread is the same 40.08%, and the midpoint of the field is $38,118,747.74.

The work sits in NYSDOT Region 10, PIN 0229.60, and bid as a federal-aid job. The department's advertisement set the bid deposit at 5% of bid and listed a DBE goal of 0%. NYSDOT's ad notes that zero-goal contracts are generally single-operation work where subcontracting is not expected. The proposal sets a completion date of Feb. 26, 2027.

NYSDOT does not print an engineer's estimate with its letting results. The public yardstick is the state's Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), which carries a construction line for each project. For this project, PIN 022960, the STIP carries a total project cost of $49.9 million and $41.2 million for construction, most of it National Highway Performance Program money. The low bid is $9,444,882.83 under that construction line, or 22.92%. Tully's number was $3,282,378.31 over it, 7.97%. One bid came in well under the state's own number and the other came in over it.

The STIP entry describes the job as pavement rehabilitation on I-495 eastbound between the Queens/Nassau line and Exit 40 (NY 25) in the Towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay. The itemized tabulation shows where the two bidders split. Tully priced one lump-sum line, item 619.01, at $6,956,000; the joint venture priced it at $1,150,000. Item 619.01 is NYSDOT's basic work zone traffic control item. On the LIE, that one line can decide who wins. Our board carries the listing as RFI-002572.

The low bidder is a pairing of two Long Island paving regulars. H & L Contracting LLC was the low bidder on its own on three more Long Island contracts the same morning. That is its own story.

Why this matters. Two bidders on a $30 million-plus interstate paving job is a thin field. When the second number is 40% above the first, the low bidder's price on traffic control, milling and asphalt becomes the market for this corridor, not a consensus. The winner also needs a lot of plant capacity and trucking inside Nassau County this season.

What to do next. The apparent low is not an award. NYSDOT still has to review the joint venture's responsibility paperwork and execute the contract. Milling, trucking, line striping, sawcut and traffic-control subs should be pricing to the joint venture's numbers now. Asphalt suppliers should expect the price to be tested against the 2027 completion date. The itemized tabulation on NYSDOT's bid-tabulations page shows every unit price and is the best benchmark for the next I-495 segment.

Update, Sept. 28, 2026: In a June 7 release, the governor's office described a $52.3 million project renewing 193 lane miles of the expressway's main lanes, HOV lane, shoulders and ramps within Nassau County, with major paving expected to finish this fall. The release did not name a contractor or cite a contract number (source: governor.ny.gov, June 7, 2026).