Could Zohran Mamdani be the mayor who finally manages to fix the beleaguered Brooklyn-Queens Expressway’s (BQE) triple cantilever on the Brooklyn Heights waterfront?
Mamdani’s Department of Transportation (DOT) unveiled on Monday a $3.5 to $4 billion plan to rehabilitate the part of the Robert Moses-era highway that runs through Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, and Downtown Brooklyn between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street — known as BQE Central. That section of the highway contains the triple cantilever, a tiered three-level structure built along the side of a cliff, with the first two levels accounting for each direction of traffic and the third containing the pedestrian Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
Unlike previous BQE reconstruction proposals pitched over the past few years, which sought to cover the cantilever with some amount of greenspace, the DOT’s new plan would simply bring the current structural configuration into a state of good repair for another four decades.
The BQE.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
The plan involves building temporary bypass roads alongside the BQE so that traffic can continue to flow over the course of the 10-year construction project, which the administration projects will be finished in 2040.
Mamdani, in a statement and a social media video, said that while past mayoral administrations have flirted with various BQE rehabilitation plans without moving forward on any, the city has run out of time to wait for the “perfect solution” to present itself.
“We’re going to fix the aging concrete, repair the deteriorating triple cantilever, and build temporary roads that keep the highway operable during construction to avoid sending tens of thousands of cars and trucks onto local streets,” Mamdani stated. “This plan allows us to safely fix the BQE without slowing our city down or wasting decades more on magical thinking. The cost of inaction is too high, and the risks to New Yorkers are too important to delay any longer.”
DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn, in a virtual briefing with reporters ahead of the official announcement, said that BQE Central was built to last about 50 years and handle roughly 50,000 vehicles a day. But instead, it has stood for 70 years — 20 years past its design life — and now suffers from the brutal wear-and-tear of bearing the burden of approximately 130,000 daily vehicles.
“The structure is safe right now,” Flynn said. “But with the time that it takes to gear up for major work, we really have pretty much run out of time to start to take action.”
What the BQE cantilever fix will entail
Flynn said the rehabilitation will involve replacing structural elements such as deteriorated deck joints and concrete as well as corroded rebar. He added that the city will upgrade highway systems, including drainage, traffic railings, and lighting, but it will not do any work on interchanges or local streets.
Additionally, Flynn said the plan does not call for widening the BQE, keeping the road at two lanes on each level.
When it comes to the temporary bypass roads, the city will construct them along two sections of the highway.
Flynn said one will be a two-level structure built over Furman Street between Atlantic Avenue and Columbia Heights, which runs parallel to the cantilever, that will not be taller than the current highway. He added that it will not be anything like a former Mayor Bill de Blasio-era proposal to use the promenade as a temporary bypass road, closing it to pedestrians and making it a six-lane portion of the highway for several years.
“It would be basically to the side of, and I think slightly below the current BQE structure, so…it’s not, you know, kind of a high thing like had been proposed a while back; it’s a little more down and kind of tucked out of view,” Flynn said.
The BQE, top view.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
The second bypass would be for the Queens-bound side of the BQE between the Vine Street on-ramp and Anchorage Plaza, he said. It would run over the Staten Island-bound side of the highway and the Brooklyn Bridge approach.
“We’re looking at alternative alignments for that because we know that that could be pretty impactful,” Flynn said. “We’re hoping that we can find other ways to make it work that would be less impactful.”
Flynn said that between now and 2028, the city will begin the land use and state-level parkland alienation processes necessary to do the project. The temporary bypasses would then be built by 2032, when construction on the main road would begin.
Who pays for it?
In the past, funding the BQE reconstruction has been a major stumbling block for the project.
It remains unclear exactly where the funding would come from, as the city is seeking to avoid the required reviews that would come with applying for federal dollars.
A city official said there is some funding in the city budget, but did not specify how much or where the rest would come from.
“At this point, what we’re looking at is a project that we can do ourselves as a city and not necessarily have to rely on external partners,” the official said. “The city has some funding in the budget, and we would be working with our partners to identify additional funding as needed.”
Reaction
Local elected officials representing the Brooklyn neighborhoods through which the BQE cantilever runs expressed gratitude that the Mamdani administration chose a path to rehabilitate the structure, rather than attempt to rebuild it.
“We are encouraged that the Mamdani Administration has listened to our community’s call to rehab—rather than replace—the BQE Triple Cantilever while maintaining only two lanes of traffic in each direction and the existing footprint of the structure,” said state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon and City Council Member Lincoln Restler in a joint statement. “This approach opens the possibility for future transformational change that communities up and down the BQE corridor have long advocated for.”
Even so, the lawmakers expressed concern about the impacts the “invasive and disruptive construction approach” would have on the Brooklyn Heights community.
“We hope the Mamdani administration will engage transparently and robustly with our community to collaboratively revise this proposal, improve air quality in surrounding neighborhoods, and explore new connections to Brooklyn Bridge Park,” they wrote. “Our hope is that this rehabilitation project will be an interim step that allows us to plan for a post-BQE era and create a real timeframe to finally retire this Robert Moses relic.”
Meanwhile, Carlo A. Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, remained hopeful that “state and federal action” would eventually result in a vision “for modernizing or even tearing down and replacing the remaining BQE roadway” — but that the city could not afford to hurry up and wait on rebuilding the cantilever.
“The sooner we can get a shovel in the ground to deal with the disastrous BQE before it completely fails, the better and safer this city will be,” Scissura said. “And so the Building Congress applauds Mayor Mamdani, Deputy Mayor Kerson, Commissioner Flynn and the entire administration for bringing a plan to the table that aims at relieving the worst section of the city’s worst highway in the least time possible.”
With reporting by Robert Pozarycki