Here’s an answer to the BQE problem: Eliminate it

December 11, 2018 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Eagle file photo by Mary Frost

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The question of what to do with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway between Atlantic Avenue and DUMBO while the cantilevered structure beneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade gets repaired has occupied many pages in the Brooklyn Eagle.

Now, a writer for Intelligencer, a website owned by New York Magazine, says we should either “bury” the venerable highway in a tunnel or just abandon it entirely.

Justin Davidson believes that the BQE is a remnant of an earlier age — the automobile age. Referencing the fact that trucks take up a large portion of BQE traffic, he predicts that in the future, freight may well be moved by water, as much of it was years ago.

As far as cars are concerned, Davidson believes that “government can manage the volume of vehicles with tools it has so far been reluctant to use, like congestion pricing, East River bridge tolls and a less mortifying transit system.”

In general, Davidson, feels that personal automobiles may be on the way out.

“Common sense will make personal cars in cities the cigarettes of the 21st century, offensive to most, beloved by some, and perennially hard to kick,” he says. He also says that letting the BQE “expire of natural causes” is one way to hasten the less-car-dependent future.

In addition to just abandoning the BQE, Davidson puts forth another alternative – putting it into a tunnel, an alternative that the city’s Department of Transportation has rejected as being too expensive. He points out that while Boston’s “Big Dig” took 15 years to complete and inconvenienced motorists, it also freed up roughly 300 acres that were previously occupied by Interstate 93.

The idea of putting the BQE into a tunnel was championed by the late Dennis Holt, columnist for the Daily Eagle. Holt felt that a tunnel would not only solve the problem of the crumbling cantilevered structure beneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade but would make Sunset Park more attractive for real estate development.