{"id":328440,"date":"2026-08-24T15:28:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T15:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/328440\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T15:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T15:28:19","slug":"mamdani-makes-bqe-announcement-on-return-from-vacacation-nbc-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/328440\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani makes BQE announcement on return from vacacation \u2013 NBC New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, fresh off his weeklong upstate vacation<\/a>, announced his return to New York City Monday with a declaration on the long-deteriorating Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. <\/p>\n

They’re “fixing” it. Actually. <\/p>\n

Mamdani and the city’s transit chief jointly announced Monday a $4 billion rehab project to improve the city-owned section of the highway, known as BQE Central.<\/p>\n

City Hall says it’s a glaring need that previous administrations have neglected for decades.<\/p>\n

According to the city, the BQE infrastructure is 20 years past its design life, and, daily enduring double the vehicle load — about 130,000 — it was designed to hold.<\/p>\n

The roughly $4 billion, 10-year rehab project announced Monday aims to extend the design life of BQE Central by another two decades. The mayor’s office says the project, which would break ground in 2030, is the shortest-term plan needed to keep the structure safe and stable while allowing for the city to work with the state,\u00a0which controls the northern and southern segments of the BQE, on a long-term vision for the entire highway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani’s office says every year of NOT improving BQE Central infrastructure costs the city $160 million in escalation and increases the risk of a shutdown that would force a significant amount of daily vehicle traffic — including all 13,000 daily truck trips — onto local streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor decades, prior administrations have\u00a0failed to deliver\u00a0urgent\u00a0long-term\u00a0repairs to BQE Central \u2013 but we can no longer afford to wait for the perfect solution,\u201d\u00a0Mamdani said in a statement. “We\u2019re\u00a0going to fix the aging concrete, repair the\u00a0deteriorating\u00a0triple cantilever, and build temporary roads that\u00a0keep the highway operable during construction\u00a0to\u00a0avoid\u00a0sending tens of thousands of cars\u00a0and trucks\u00a0onto local streets.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mayor’s 10-year plan calls for temporary bypass structures that allow city transit workers to repair deteriorated sections of highway and improve draining, railings, and lightining, while protecting local streets. This should facilitate commerce and preserve access to historic sites like the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.<\/p>\n

NYC DOT\u00a0plans to\u00a0build a temporary, two-level highway bypass on top of Furman Street, below the\u00a0promenade, from Atlantic Avenue to Columbia Heights. This bypass will be no higher than the\u00a0existing Queens-bound highway and will not block the\u00a0promenade. The agency\u00a0plans to\u00a0build a second temporary, elevated highway bypass from Columbia Heights, over the Brooklyn Bridge approach, to the Manhattan Bridge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This plan allows us to safely fix the\u00a0BQE\u00a0without slowing our city down\u00a0or\u00a0wasting decades more\u00a0on magical thinking,” Mamdani’s statement continued. “The cost of inaction is too high,\u00a0and the risks to New\u00a0Yorkers\u00a0are too\u00a0important\u00a0to delay any longer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mayor will likely be asked about the plan at an unrelated parks announcement later Monday morning. That parks announcement will mark his first public appearance in 11 days. His administration had said he was receiving regular updates from his senior staff while on vacation with his family upstate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani, fresh off his weeklong upstate vacation, announced his return to New York City Monday with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,2023],"class_list":["post-328440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-traffic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328440","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=328440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}