New bike lane on the BQE @StreetsblogNYC pic.twitter.com/SHmmtVUGvv
— Noah Goldberg (@Noah__Goldberg) August 7, 2021
Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City officials revealed a plan on Wednesday to squeeze another 20 years of operation out of the decrepit Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. This will buy time to come up with a more visionary, forward-thinking plan for the highway that reduces dependence on trucks and takes community concerns into account, the mayor said.
De Blasio said the city would “use this opportunity to rethink how people, goods, and services move around our city … The world is changing and we want to find new solutions.”
The plan includes preserving the current infrastructure by waterproofing it and eliminating the use of roadway salt; performing immediate maintenance; and enforcing limits on overweight trucks.
NYC’s Department of Transportation
has been warning for years that a one and a half mile stretch of the
interstate, which includes the triple cantilever underpinning the
Brooklyn Heights Promenade, was dangerously deteriorated. Rebuilding the
segment in its current form would be a massive undertaking costing
roughly $4 billion, and many advocates have called for the BQE, which is
a major truck route and source of pollution, to be cut back in size or even eliminated altogether.
While de Blasio is presiding over the intermediate-term repairs, he will be long out of office before any of the visionary work can begin. But he denied that he was “kicking the can down the road.”
“The notion that you’re going to turn the BQE into a park overnight, obviously that’s not going to immediately happen,” de Blasio said. “You need to reduce truck traffic, [move to] water and rail freight, and transform the reality. It will take years … This plan opens the door to get all those bigger things right.”
Officials pointed out it would also take years to line up the legislation and funding necessary for a major rethinking of the highway.
“This plan is designed to address current safety and structural concerns about the 70-year old roadway, while reimagining not only its future purpose, but how freight is moved in this city in the 21st century,” NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Hank Gutman said.
12 comments:
Will this be funded by the minute gas tax or will taxpayers have to bail out motorists again?
I thought Trump fixed all that stuff.
Did he run out of other people's money ? What a Bozo...
My butts been wiped said...
Sounds like build back better.
The communists will expect the taxpayer to fork our more money to pay for over-privileged motorists to drive around in their oversized SUV's.
They're probably trying to give away the BQE to YIMBY developers. Eventually they will cause a transportation disaster with the anti-car agenda these streetsblog assholes have.
If you hit him (Or he hits you, which is more likely) It's your fault. That's the bike nazi's outlook...
I didn't know driving my car could be political ?
I'm not woke enough...
"Over-Privileged Motorists"
Many people who drive are NOT over-privileged.
They are trying to work and pay the high taxes for those unnecessary bike lanes that many bicyclists DO NOT pay taxes on!!
They are also paying the high property taxes many are forced to pay to house homeless criminals, drug addicts, and sex predators in hotels or homeless shelters in residential neighborhoods many property owners and residents DO NOT WANT!!!
How are hospitals, nursing homes, senior day care centers are suppose to get the medical equipment, PPEs, furniture, and medical supplies they need if the city bans vehicles, trucks from NYC streets?
How is the Postal Service, UPS, FedEx, suppose to make their deliveries if they can't drive their delivery trucks and deliver the packages many people order from the internet?
Are they suppose to carry boxes are their heads and hope for the best?
What about the elderly and disabled? Many of them have to travel in wheelchairs and/or vehicles that are equipped to fit their medical equipment.
Should they be told to learn how to ride a bicycle or stay home and die since vehicles are prohibited on NYC streets and bridges and expressways?
Wasn't there an article not to long ago stating NYC has the most traffic congestion in the country?
Adding more bicycle lanes are making traffic conditions WORSE for NYC!!
No one says it because they know they will offend the bike nazi's and their close-minded propaganda.
Adding more lanes only moves the bottleneck to a new location. Less cars = less traffic.
Car drivers are just plain lazy freeloaders.
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