Begin, Quick, Everyone: Repair the BQE the smart way
The last mayor and the last governor didn’t do what they needed to repair and replace the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which has only crumbled more each day as the structure, which turns 70 in two years, is beaten down by the pounding of 130,000 daily vehicles. The reduction from a six-lane highway to four lanes improves safety, but it’s only a Band-Aid.
Now the current mayor is moving ahead and he needs to be joined immediately and with full enthusiasm by the current governor with the goal of bringing in the billions of newly available federal dollars passed by Congress in two separate laws within the past year.
The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has a new Reconnecting Communities program that’s a perfect fit for the BQE, which bisected neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn. And the unipartisan Inflation Reduction Act, which we won’t call IRA, has its own Creating Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants to “reconnect communities divided by existing infrastructure.” There’s cash not just for construction, but for planning too.
With Brooklyn’s own Polly Trottenberg as deputy secretary of transportation, following on her years of service as city Department of Transportation commissioner, there will never be a better opportunity to move those just-printed federal billions into concrete, steel and asphalt on the BQE. And we don’t need to remind anyone where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls home.
The BQE’s triple-decker section under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (the walkway is the top of the three levels) is owned by New York City. But the roadway to the south and north is owned by New York State. And the whole length is a federally designated interstate highway, the only one in Brooklyn.
Mayor Adams is revving up plans for that central segment, keeping the federal pots in sight. Gov. Hochul and her transportation experts must now commence the same for the state’s portions. The money is sitting in Washington waiting to be tapped. This vital corridor in the state’s most populous county must be at the top of Hochul’s priority list.
