Brooklyn Heights

It’s time to take a fresh look at BQE tunnel: transit activist

City Council backs Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel as one of two preferred options

February 23, 2023 Mary Frost
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BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — With the clock ticking on the deteriorating Triple Cantilever portion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE), transportation activist and civic leader Roy Sloane says it’s time to put the Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel proposal back on the table.

Sloane is not alone. A 2020 study for the New York City Council, carried out by global engineering firm Arup, highlighted the tunnel proposal as one of its two preferred solutions. (The other preferred design is a “capped highway” such as plans developed by Bjarke Ingels Group: BIG and designer Mark Baker.

The tunnel would remove roughly 25,000 trucks a day from the Triple Cantilever, which underpins the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. City Department of Transportation engineers have projected that the cantilever could become unsafe as early as 2026, due to decades of salt and water infiltration eating away at the structure’s uncoated steel reinforcing bars. 

Roy Sloane has been advocating for the Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel proposal since 2010. Photo courtesy of Roy Sloane

The BQE is part of Interstate 278, but the 70-year-old roadway does not meet modern interstate standards, and the 155,000 vehicles it carries every day far exceed its current capacity.  

Mayor Eric Adams and his DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez are currently carrying out an expedited BQE redesign process including community workshops, and the city is seeking federal infrastructure funds. 

Sloane envisions a 2.74-mile tunnel with two traffic lanes in each direction under Downtown Brooklyn, from roughly Hamilton Avenue to Sand Street, to bypass 4.47 miles of highway. The existing BQE Central would remain in place as a local feeder road. This would allow the in-place restoration of the historic Triple Cantilever, and preserve the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, he said.

Related Article: Opinion: Transforming the BQE: A Path Forward

The tunnel would reduce traffic congestion and pollution across the entire BQE corridor, Sloane says, and cut travel time from Gowanus to the Brooklyn Navy Yard by 10 to 30 minutes per trip. And it would pay for itself through tolls.

Roughly 155,000 vehicles a day use the the Triple Cantilever section of the BQE, including up to 25,000 trucks. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

Solution to a tangled problem: A straight line

A graphic designer and former president of the Cobble Hill Association, Sloane was a member of Community Board 6’s Transportation Committee from 1985 to 2020. He was the only citizen member of New York State’s BQE Technical Advisory Committee during its original 2010 study, and has been advocating for the tunnel plan since that time.

“Engineers say that the most elegant solution to any problem is a straight line,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle.

The designs recently presented by the city’s DOT “will not solve the backups, delays and overflows currently plaguing the highway,” he said. Congestion in the central portion of the BQE is a primary cause of delays and increased air pollution on the BQE north and south of the Triple Cantilever, according to Sloane. 

“The Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel is the only proposal that offers transformative potential for comprehensively resolving the transportation issues on the BQE, in Downtown Brooklyn, in the surrounding residential communities — not to mention improving mobility for Brooklyn’s businesses and even for Brooklyn drivers living in areas far from mass transit,” he said.

“But most importantly, the tunnel will improve air quality, improve the health of our citizens, and make our Downtown Brooklyn and the surrounding communities more liveable, more walkable and more bikeable,” he said. 

The Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel proposal includes a 2.7-mile tunnel (shown in red) with two traffic lanes in each direction across Downtown Brooklyn from Hamilton Avenue to Sand Street. It would replace 4.5 miles of congested BQE including the Triple Cantilever. Map courtesy of Roy Sloane

Study: Tunnel expensive but could pay for itself

While initially expensive, a tunnel could be financed by bonds and could pay for itself through tolls, since the alignment proposed for the tunnel would link up only with state-owned portions of I-278, Sloane said. (Only the state can impose tolls.)

“The tunnel bypass would cost more but would be a more transformative project, allowing for the removal of the expressway through Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill,” according to Arup’s report.

In rejecting the tunnel idea over the years, the city has cited expense, the existence of underground infrastructure including subways and railroads, and disruption to neighborhoods at tunnel portals. NYC DOT said it revisited various tunnel ideas in 2016, and came to the conclusion that there were a number of factors making the idea infeasible.

Arup engineers, however, say tunneling technology has changed since the 2010 study. The firm’s report stated that tunnel construction would not disturb properties at ground level, as it would be bored deep underground into solid rock. (Depending on the grade, roughly 350 to 500 feet underground.)

This graphic illustrates the pinchpoints and bottlenecks undermining the current BQE Central configuration. These cause delays north and south of the Triple Cantilever. Graphic courtesy of Roy Sloane

“[We] have new ways to build things,” Trent Lethco, leader of Arup’s Transport Consulting in the Americas division, said at the 2020 City Council hearing on the BQE study. “So a tunnel proposal of ten years ago is a very different tunnel proposal than one from today … So it’s less impactful, it’s more predictable, and it’s more cost effective.

“We realize that building a tunnel comes with significant costs,” Lethco said. “But the costs are commensurate with the benefits for the city, and it’s worthy of further consideration.”

A final design would be required to make a determination about the location of the portals. The southern portal could be located near the intersection of the Prospect and Gowanus Expressways (near Home Depot), or further down 4th Avenue (closure to Costco). The northern portal would likely be in the vicinity of where Flushing and Kent Avenue intersect with the BQE around the Navy Yard, Sloane said.

“Starting construction underneath the Gowanus Expressway would mean traffic could flow freely on the elevated structure above and not require diversion onto residential streets,” he said.

According to Arup, 4,000 square feet of land would be required to provide emergency egress in the middle of the tunnel.

The crumbling, 70-year-old Triple Cantilever built by Robert Moses underpins the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

It’s the state’s job

The tunnel plan would free the city to decide how best to handle what would become a local road while putting responsibility for the interstate back where it belongs, Sloane said.

“The best scenario would be for the tunnel to be a state project and the Triple Cantilever repair or replacement to be under new York City jurisdiction,” he said. 

The rehabilitation of the 1.5-mile BQE section from Atlantic Avenue to Sands Street was a state DOT priority until 2011, when the state, under Gov. Andrew Cuomo, abruptly dropped the project. The state also dropped a rehab project involving 3.8 miles of the Gowanus Expressway, from Sixth Avenue to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. 

The state’s abdication of these projects has always baffled local officials and community organizations such as the Brooklyn Heights Association and Cobble Hill Association, which were involved in the 2010 planning sessions.

According to a notice posted in the Federal Register on Nov. 16, 2011 by Jonathan McDade, New York Division Administrator for the Federal Highway Administration, the state lacked the funds to carry out the projects following the economic crisis of 2008. 

“The economic downturn has affected all areas of government and Transportation is not an exception; recent projections show insufficient funds to meet our infrastructure needs,” McDade wrote at that time. To assure the “continued safe operation” of the roadway, “the structural deficiencies will be addressed in the intermediate term through a series of projects.”

The city has since found itself burdened with an increasingly unstable stretch of interstate highway.

Proposal: A 2.7-mile tunnel with two traffic lanes in each direction straight across Downtown Brooklyn from Hamilton Avenue to Sand Street, to replace 4.5 miles of congested BQE including the Triple Cantilever.
- Would become the new alignment for I-278.
- Would cost roughly $3.6 billion, financed with bonds and tolls paid by roadway users.
- Heavy trucks would be required to take the tunnel.
- Current BQE from Hamilton Avenue to Sand Street would become a low-speed feeder road.
- Would allow in-place restoration of historic Triple Cantilever, preserve Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
- Would save 10-30 minutes per trip across Downtown Brooklyn.
- Could remove 100,000 vehicles per day from surface roadways.  
- Deep boring (up to 500 feet) would be minimally invasive at the surface, like the construction of Water Tunnel Number 2.
- Aligns with NYS’ green goals by reducing pollution and traffic congestion.
- CO2 emissions would be either jet-vented or potentially equipped with carbon recapture/scrubbers under development.

Adams and Rodriguez are currently carrying out an expedited design process to replace the 1.5- mile BQE Central. The city will be seeking federal infrastructure funds.

In addition to the reconstruction of BQE Central, the city is also gathering input for a future rehab of 10 miles of the highway it calls BQE North and BQE South, which run through primarily low-income Black and Brown communities north and south of the cantilever. These communities have been divided by the highway for seven decades, and have suffered from asthma and other pollution-related ailments. 

“Now is the time to think big,” Adams said in December. “We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a BQE for the 21st century and transform an environmental and aesthetic nightmare into a dream come true for our city.” 

But the state stunned city officials when a representative told Streetblog on Feb. 9 that it has “no plans” to redesign the state-owned portion of the BQE. Borough President Antonio Reynoso and 17 other elected officials issued a joint statement calling the state’s refusal to participate in the process “completely unacceptable and irresponsible.”

City Department of Transportation engineers have projected that BQE Central’s Triple Cantilever could become unsafe as early as 2026, due to decades of salt and water infiltration. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

Why has the city taken on the project?

Jon Orcutt, policy director at the city’s DOT from 2007 to 2014, writes in an opinion piece for Streetsblog, “It’s puzzling that city government has taken on the cantilever project at all instead of forcing state DOT to fulfill its responsibility to maintain Interstate Highway infrastructure. 

“Activists and elected officials engaging with the city DOT’s current process should be asking tough questions about what the city is really up to with regard to the BQE — and why it won’t use its power to push much harder to make a full corridor plan real,” Orcutt said.

Both an expert BQE panel put together by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council said in their final reports that the project would need city, state and federal participation.

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Our Readers Respond: BQE Tunnel Proposal

Responses directly to our website:

  • Glad I live in Southern Brooklyn! HAHA.
  • I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ NOT! I live near the Promenade and sometimes, in my retirement, I stroll there and become briefly mesmerized by the passing traffic below on the cantilever. I see lots of heavy, speeding vehicles that don’t belong there. They weigh many, many times as much as the average vehicle, for which the Cantilever was built. If there ever was a bad accident, I really would smell napalm in the morning. I know those trucks are delivering vital goods I purchased just yesterday. But they also have almost destroyed the base of my favorite landmark, the Promenade. So, yes, I wish they could be banished to a route far underground.
  • Article says 100,000 vehicles would use tunnel – is that  1/3 of existing traffic or more? –  because reinstalling the lane missing now would accommodate 1/3 more. Though I’m all for the tunnel!
  • It is more than obvious that a tunnel is the best way to go. Just yesterday I spent a half hour to travel 12 blocks on the Hicks St. service road.

 

Responses via social media:

  • Noted in Brief: And they’ll gladly pay to tunnel deep enough under 12 subway lines + atlantic/terminal lirr?… That’s a lot of cars!!… It’s already unsafe… Something has to change!… (Emoji) Clapping hands!
  • They need to create a truck route for all trucks and keep all trucks off this section of the highway.
  • Madrid would have tunneled that 100 times by now
  • The Gowanus Expressway from Columbia Street to 64th Street should be converted into a high-line park, and direct all vehicles below grade.
  • The BQE will collapse before this is ever solved
  • The lane closures under the Promenade have caused major traffic issues on Columbia Street in my neighborhood. The emissions map should include the stretch of Columbia between Sackett and Congress.
  • @thepoliticalpersonality_ says: Spoke to @carlobrooklyn [Carlo Scissura] about this on my show… fascinating infrastructure issue

 

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