As the BQE continues to crumble, politicians, neighborhood groups, and design firms have all come to the table with a plan to fix it—these solutions put forth have ranged from the controversial (building a temporary highway on top of the historic Brooklyn Heights Promenade) to the compromising (a truck-only highway with a "linear park" on top). A day ahead of a public hearing on the future of the BQE, the City Council is the latest to toss ideas into the ring, one of which delivers the most utopian vision yet: a complete teardown, with an underground tunnel to support traffic.
Look west and you'll find cities like San Francisco and Seattle have paved the way with similar projects. And the City Council's proposal also points to Madrid's Calle 30, calling it "a necessary road [that] could not just be torn down." To solve the problem, they dug tunnels and created a surface area that was "redeveloped into parks, bike paths, and affordable housing... Of the 62 miles of roadway re-built, 35 miles of it is covered."
The abundance of plans around the deteriorating infrastructure is not surprising, as it has presented a rare opportunity to significantly alter the landscape of the city—as these cities above have done—and step away from the Robert Moses-era of urban planning that centered the city around a growing car culture.
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said in a statement on Monday that they hired their own engineering firm, Arup, "to determine the best way to spend billions of dollars to rebuild this vital roadway." He noted, "This is not just about rebuilding a highway, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build the city we deserve and need in the future." He also called the previous plans "half-baked," while acknowledging the urgency to move forward (last year it was found that the BQE will be unsafe within the next five years).
Working with Arup, the Council said they evaluated "seven physical planning options and narrowed them down to two preferred scenarios that range in scale and ambition." (Their full report can be found here.)
- Scenario 1 – Capped Highway: This scenario is based on the Mark Baker Tri-Line and Bjarke Ingels Group Brooklyn-Queens Park concepts, in which the highway is reconstructed at-grade and then capped with an expansion of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
- Scenario 2 – Tunnel Bypass with Surface Boulevard: Construct a bypass tunnel from the Gowanus Expressway to Bedford Avenue in South Williamsburg, allowing for the reconstruction of the BQE from Cobble Hill to Clinton Hill as a surface street and new open space, transforming the entire area.
The capped highway plan is the quicker, less expensive option, costing around $3.5 billion and taking six years, while the tunnel plan could cost an astronomical $11 billion. And if Boston's decade-long "Big Dig" is any indication, the project would move slowly. De Blasio has previously rejected the idea of a tunnel, based on the financial and logistical constraints.
Currently, there is $1.7 billion in the city's capital plan to put toward the BQE, however, it could receive additional state funding. While Governor Andrew Cuomo has been silent on the project, it would become a state issue if it extends beyond the Atlantic to Sands Street stretch; while the triple-cantilevered stretch of the roadway is maintained by the NYC DOT, the highway that precedes and follows is under the authority of the state DOT.
Transportation expert Sam Schwartz told the NY Times that the tunnel could take too long to be a viable solution. "It would set back the process... Here we have a patient — the BQE — in the intensive care unit. It cannot wait 10 years for a tunnel to be built," Schwartz said.
The City Council's proposal comes a few weeks after de Blasio's "expert panel" offered their own recommendation, though de Blasio did not support their suggestion to reduce lanes on the roadway, seemingly unconvinced that the so-called "road diets" advocated by some transportation experts actually reduce traffic congestion. "We have to be careful," de Blasio said. "If we say ‘hey, let’s reduce the amount of lanes,’ that’s not a guarantee people get out of their cars, it is a guarantee of traffic jams and other challenges.”
The Council's report notes that "next steps call for creating and passing state legislation this session to create a new governing body to manage the BQE project, including developing a plan for how to build for the 21st century while maintaining safe operations of the triple cantilever."
The Mayor's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the City Council's proposals.
