'BQE merge' by afagen is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Mayor punts on long term BQE fix, releasing temporary solution
A plan released by the DOT last week will provide a 20-year patch for a dangerously deteriorating stretch of the BQE, but no holistic vision
With months remaining in his final term, Mayor Bill de Blasio has punted on the long term problem of the deteriorating Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, releasing instead a short-term 20-year fix.
The main issue addressed by the mayor in his new plan last week is finding a solution for the crumbling 1.5-mile, city-owned triple cantilever layer cake that slices under the Brooklyn Heights promenade.
“People can say, ‘kicking the can down the road.’ I just disagree,” he said at a news conference last week. “We have a structure. We thought it was in danger of literally imminent collapse. It turns out there’s a way to preserve it.”
The section of the BQE, from Sands Street to Atlantic Avenue, is in such bad shape that the DOT has repeatedly stated it needs to be replaced before 2026 at a cost of close to $4 billion. The city’s preferred plan would have temporarily replaced the Brooklyn Heights Promenade with a six-lane highway, blocking views and bringing all the headaches that come with 153,000 vehicles a day to neighborhood level for six to 10 years. Backlash was so virulent to the plan that the mayor relented.
The four pillars of de Blasio’s new plan, released through the Department of Transportation, involve preserving the structure, managing traffic, expanding monitoring of the structure’s health, and developing a long term vision (which will fall on his successor to accomplish). There is no mention in the report of cost of the project, which focuses more on preserving than rebuilding.
A key aspect of de Blasio’s new plan is stopping water infiltration to prevent and delay corrosion by improving drainage and reintroducing waterproofing methods to the highway. Beginning Aug. 30, the DOT will reduce the BQE between Atlantic Avenue and the Brooklyn Bridge from three lanes to two, to reduce the amount of weight on the highway.
As for the longer term problem of the 70-year-old expressway, a legacy of Robert Moses’ midcentury attempts to create miles of interstates criss-crossing through New York City (often ripping neighborhoods apart in the process), the mayor has promised to restart a community process to develop a plan.
“It’s better than nothing,” Sidney Meyer, the chair of the transportation and public safety committee for Community Board 2, told New York 1. “It’s a good first shot. It has to be followed up by other things that will fix the road.”
