{"id":368578,"date":"2026-10-09T04:16:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T04:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/368578\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T04:16:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T04:16:42","slug":"friday-video-how-mamdani-can-avoid-his-bqe-bypass-boondoggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/368578\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Video: How Mamdani Can Avoid His BQE Bypass Boondoggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Readers rejoice: Mayor Mamdani need not build a disruptive highway detour through the Brooklyn waterfront<\/a> \u2014 because the car-maggedon his administration expects to materialize from a potential highway teardown is a myth.<\/p>\n

A recent video from the Joint Transit Association, a transit advocacy group of current and former New York City public school students, lays out in great detail why and how the city should plan for a future without the Robert Moses-era highway.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of examples to choose from to make the case for removing the BQE, whether its the Inner Loop<\/a> in upstate\u2019s East Rochester, the Bonaventure Expressway<\/a> in Montr\u00e9al, the Catharijnesingel<\/a> in Utrecht, the Harbor Drive<\/a> in Portland, Oregon, the Cheonggyecheon<\/a> in Seoul, or of course, the West Side Highway<\/a> in nearby Manhattan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever you close a highway, the result is not some big scary congestion. Instead, people find other ways to get around or not make the trip at all,\u201d says the video\u2019s presenter. \u201cWe ought to take the lessons of other cities \u2014 and New York City itself \u2014 and apply them to the BQE.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\tRecommended<\/p>\n

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Mamdani administration officials, meanwhile, insist that time has run out for bigger picture<\/a> thinking. They warn of an impending traffic meltdown if the BQE goes away, but other major roadway shutdowns show that\u2019s not what happens. Los Angeles, for another example, braced for \u201cCarmageddon\u201d<\/a> when it shut down its busy Interstate 405 for two days, but traffic continued to move freely<\/a> because people adapted to the change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf L.A. can figure this out, why can\u2019t we?\u201d the JTA video asks.<\/p>\n

The group acknowledges that a Trump administration likely won\u2019t green-light a major expressway removal anytime soon. But it still makes a convincing case that City Hall \u2014 with some help from the state \u2014 should close the triple cantilever for repairs without building a $4 billion bypass along Brooklyn Bridge Park and over the Brooklyn Bridge itself.<\/p>\n

And all of it would cost less than a quarter of Mamdani\u2019s current plan \u2014 and give the city time to plot a BQE-less future.<\/p>\n

Watch the whole video below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Readers rejoice: Mayor Mamdani need not build a disruptive highway detour through the Brooklyn waterfront \u2014 because the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-368578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368578","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=368578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}