N.Y. Today: Is the New York Half Marathon the tougher race?

Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll find out whether the New York Half Marathon will cross the East River on the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday, as it did for the first time last year. We’ll also get details on a decision dismissing most of a lawsuit against the Trump administration over funding for the rail tunnel project under the Hudson River.

Eddie Collazo James Estrin/The New York Times

Eddie Collazo, a mailroom supervisor for a financial firm, has run the New York City Marathon at least five times — all 26.2 miles. On Sunday, he will run his fourth New York Half Marathon — only 13.1 miles. Which is harder?

The Half, he said. There’s something about the route over the Brooklyn Bridge and along the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive that sets the Half apart, not necessarily in a good way. The full marathon takes Collazo (and the 60,000 other entrants) through Brooklyn, into Queens and into Manhattan on the Queensboro Bridge. They do not have to cope with the headache that is the F.D.R., as the 30,000 runners in the Half will on Sunday.

“You’ve got to control your pace,” he said, “because if you don’t, the F.D.R. Drive will break you.”

The challenge is not to accelerate coming off the bridge “because you instantly get excited — you’re in Manhattan. You start to run faster, forgetting that there are about six more miles left. But you’ve still got to get through on the F.D.R. and into Times Square.”

But after the seesaw temperatures of the last couple of months, there can be potholes along the way — and sprains, breaks and other orthopedic worries. Ted Metellus, the race director for the New York Road Runners, said that city crews would check the course on Sunday morning and fill the cavities and craters.

Unlike the Marathon, the Half has cutoff times: Runners must reach the bridge by 10:20 a.m. — more than three hours after the first wave of competitors is scheduled to start — and must exit the F.D.R. Drive by 11:45 a.m. Metellus said that buses would pick up runners who lagged and were still on the course by the cutoffs, which he said were necessary because there are no sidewalks on the F.D.R. Drive, making the course impassable for anyone on foot once traffic resumes.

Once again, over the Brooklyn Bridge

This will be the second Half Marathon to cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

Before last year, the Half used the Manhattan Bridge. The change — necessitated by construction for the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Project, to protect against flooding as water levels rise with climate change — created a route that was 30 seconds to a minute faster. The runners no longer had to struggle with a couple of uphills on the way to the bridge, and the Brooklyn Bridge is flatter than the Manhattan Bridge.

Metellus said last year that deciding whether to move back to the Manhattan Bridge would “the million-dollar question” for 2026. On Thursday he said the race went so well in 2025 that the question became whether it could stay on the Brooklyn Bridge. Abel Kipchumba and Sharon Lokedi set course records as they won the men’s and women’s divisions last year, and they will be running again on Sunday. But the faster times weren’t the only plus. Metellus said that running across the Brooklyn Bridge added to the appeal of the race.

The runners will start on the edge of Prospect Park, as always for the Half, but Metellus said that the starting line had been moved down Washington Avenue, closer to the Brooklyn Museum. To clear the way for the runners, there will be street closings and no-parking zones along the route, starting at midnight Sunday near the starting line. Some streets in Brooklyn will also be closed on Sunday for St. Patrick’s parades.

WEATHER

Expect increasing clouds with a high near 49. Tonight will be partly cloudy with temperatures in the low 40s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until March 20 (Eid al-Fitr).

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Mary can just be her worst, and all over the place, and at the same time incredibly fun to watch. It’s such a delicious, beyond broad, take on a dark comedy.” — Maya Rudolph, who will make her Broadway debut next month, playing a highly fictionalized version of Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!”

The latest Metro news

Assemblyman Micah Lasher Dave Sanders for The New York Times

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A judge dismisses most of a lawsuit over the funding freeze on the Gateway rail tunnel

Graham Dickie for The New York Times

The case is mostly moot, Judge Richard Hertling said as he dismissed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s temporary hold on more than $200 million in funding for the rail tunnel project under the Hudson River.

Hertling said that the agency overseeing the work no longer had much of a claim against the federal government, now that the federal Department of Transportation has paid what it had promised for the tunnel project. But he did not rule on two counts in the complaint that sought compensation for additional costs.

The funding freeze began last October when Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, said the funding would be held up while his agency reviewed what it called New York State’s “discriminatory” and “unconstitutional contracting processes.” President Trump then said that the administration had “terminated” the long-delayed project.

That led to a halt of almost all work on the $16 billion project for more than a week and about 1,000 layoffs after the agency coordinating the project, the Gateway Development Corporation, said that it had run out of money. The commission sued the federal government on Feb. 2 as elected officials in New York and New Jersey fretted that the tunnel would be a goner without the funding. Duffy’s department had pledged more than $11 billion for it.

Hertling’s decision followed a defeat for the Trump administration in Manhattan federal court last month in a separate lawsuit over Gateway that was filed by the two states. In that case, Judge Jeannette Vargas ordered the Transportation Department to stop withholding the funding, and it paid the $205 million, plus nearly $50 million that subsequently came due. The laid-off workers were called back and resumed work.

METROPOLITAN DIARY

The cynic in February

Dear Diary:

Why trust a month of varying days
Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?
A month that trips the tongue,
bewilders groundhogs,
offers a pale diluted sun
to mock our chill.

Beneath fresh layers of snow
lies treacherous ice.
Beware that February sky,
Blue and serene as a nursery.
Storm clouds threaten
our springtime fantasies.

Don’t believe lovers
who bring valentines.
Red satin can hide a cardboard heart,
sweet phrases, like soft-centered chocolates, cloy
and lacy paper promises
may blow away in March.

— Kathleen DuHaime

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

PLAY TODAY’S GAMES

Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.

Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.

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