By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n
Officials are sticking with their hopes that Queens drivers and passengers will finally traverse a construction-free Van Wyck Expressway this year \u2013 but exactly when that day will come remains unclear. <\/p>\n
In the spring, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and New York State Department of Transportation officials said that Queens drivers would be free from decades of headaches on the notorious highway by September. <\/p>\n
But now, the DOT and the BP are going with a broader \u201cearly fall\u201d deadline for completion of the work, which includes creating a dedicated lane to John F. Kennedy International Airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Department of Transportation continues to progress its project along the Van Wyck Expressway that will improve access to and from JFK Airport and improve reliability throughout the corridor,\u201d DOT spokesperson Joseph Morrissey said in a statement to the Eagle. Weather permitting, we currently expect to conclude the project this fall.\u201d <\/p>\n
When asked by the Eagle to specify the completion date, Morrissey said \u201cearly fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
The date is noticeably less specific than the timeframe given by DOT leadership earlier this year. <\/p>\n
In April, DOT official Luis Aristy told a room of Queens residents at the South Ozone Park Seventh-day Adventist Church that \u201cthe remaining [work] will [be finished] by September.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is going to be [done by] the end of summer,\u201d he said. \u201cThat will be the entire project.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, in a phone interview with the Eagle, Richards echoed Aristy\u2019s statements and was willing to stake his political future on the deadline. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf it’s not finished in September, don’t vote for me,\u201d he said, although the BP, who is term-limited, will not be running for reelection.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Richards toured the Van Wyck alongside DOT workers. <\/p>\n
\u201cAfter decades of seemingly endless construction and rehabilitation projects, work on the Van Wyck Expressway is, at long last, in the final stages of completion,\u201d Richards said in a statement to the Eagle. \u201cFrom the state-of-the-art new sewer infrastructure that will help keep South Queens dry to the new HOV lane that will get travelers and cab drivers in and out of JFK quicker than ever, this work to modernize the Van Wyck will have been well worth the wait.\u201d <\/p>\n
Regardless of when it\u2019s completed, Richards said the World\u2019s Borough will celebrate a construction-free Van Wyck soon. <\/p>\n
\u201cI’m still serious about that community block party once that work is over,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Generations of Queens drivers, particularly in South Queens between Howard Beach and Jamaica, have dealt with the road\u2019s seemingly endless construction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach Officials are sticking with their hopes that Queens drivers and passengers will finally traverse a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-324072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}