B757 captain reported the lights atop the goethals bridge can be mistaken for runway 4 reils at ewr.

Narrative:

I submitted a [report] about the lights atop the newly rebuilt goethals bridge on a 3-mile final to the 4s in newark. At that time they had bright white lights on each pillar in sequence that mimicked reils. The safety team issued comms to the pilots. Days later the lights were changed to red and flashed on a random pattern.we broke out of a 900 ft overcast the other night and they looked just like reils again. Flashing white and together. Could easily be mistaken in low visibility conditions.[in the past] we had a mistaken VASI issue on 31 at lga that almost led to a CFIT incident. This is a similar setup.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B757 Captain reported the lights atop the Goethals Bridge can be mistaken for Runway 4 REILs at EWR.

Narrative: I submitted a [report] about the lights atop the newly rebuilt Goethals bridge on a 3-mile final to the 4s in Newark. At that time they had bright white lights on each pillar in sequence that mimicked REILs. The safety team issued comms to the pilots. Days later the lights were changed to red and flashed on a random pattern.We broke out of a 900 ft overcast the other night and they looked just like REILs again. Flashing white and together. Could easily be mistaken in low visibility conditions.[In the past] we had a mistaken VASI issue on 31 at LGA that almost led to a CFIT incident. This is a similar setup.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1569099
Time
Date	201808
Place
Locale Reference	EWR.Airport
State Reference	NJ
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	B757 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Final Approach
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Captain
Events
Anomaly	No Specific Anomaly Occurred All Types