As Mary Frost in the Eagle reports, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn have announced a plan to repair the city owned central portion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which includes the triple cantilevered part adjacent to Brooklyn Heights and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. The plan, which is estimated to cast $40 billion and does not rely on federal funding, will begin with environmental reviews and preliminary work, including reconstruction of the overpass that carries Columbia Heights over the BQE. Major work is not planned to start before 2030.
Good news for Heights residents is that during reconstruction BQE traffic will be diverted to a temporary bypass highway that will run at the level of Fulton Street the length of the triple cantilever, from Atlantic Avenue to Columbia Heights. From there to Sands Street, the northern end of the city owned portion of the BQE, the bypass will follow a route not yet fully determined. These bypasses, which will be in place before reconstruction, mean that traffic should not be diverted to local streets. Also, the BQE will be kept to two lanes in each direction.
Other sort of good news is that, while the Brooklyn Heights Promenade is part of the triple cantilever and therefore must be reconstructed, work on the Promenade will be done in segments, so that parts of the Promenade will be available to the public at all times. This process could last from 2032 to 2040.
The bad news is that this plan envisions a four lane highway, with attendant air and noise pollution, remaining under Brooklyn Heights for some years. The Eagle story notes that activists have “long been pushing for a total rethinking of the entire BQE span” north and south of the Heights, where it has “divided communities” and “has been polluting the air ever since.” A problem is that these parts of the highway are under state as well as city jurisdiction, so any solution would require action by two levels of government. Such a solution could involve the removal of the portion of the BQE under the heights. Still, the Eagle quotes Commissioner Flynn as saying the present plan “does not close the door to a more visionary redesign that would ‘right these wrongs’.”
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