Pressure builds to put brakes on BQE ‘boondoggle’

NYC has submitted request for federal funds, will soon start ‘alienating’ parkland

December 18, 2023 Mary Frost

The BQE. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

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An increasing number of Brooklyn civic organizations, transportation experts and officials are urging Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state to put the brakes on what they call a rushed and ill-considered city plan to replace and enlarge “BQE Central,” a deteriorated, city-owned 1.5-mile section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street.

NYC recently applied for $800 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for the project. This represents approximately 14% of the estimated total cost of $5.5 billion.

In its push to “get stuff done,” the Adams administration is letting the opportunity of a lifetime to radically reimagine the entire BQE slip away, critics say.

On Thursday, the new 17-member Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Environmental Justice Coalition released a letter calling on Hochul and state agencies to reject the Adams administration’s plan, and work with communities on “a comprehensive transformation of the BQE to achieve environmental justice and equity in impacted communities.”

NYC has applied for $800 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding to replace the dangerously deteriorated BQE Central. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

BQE-EJC says the city’s proposal ignores the plight of communities living north and south of BQE Central, which have been bisected by the toxic highway for 80 years. The BQE carries at least 130,000 vehicles every day, 13,000 of them trucks.

“The BQE is currently a source of severe respiratory issues and public health hazards due to the immense traffic volume it carries through neighborhoods inhabited by people of color, low-income individuals, and immigrants,” the BQE-EJC letter reads in part.

“Congress and federal agencies are allocating major funding to once-in-a-generation major investments in infrastructure, including through the U.S. DOT ‘Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods’ program, to specifically address communities divided by highways. We cannot squander this moment,” the coalition said.

The BQE Environmental Justice Coalition is pushing to reunite communities long divided by the BQE, like Cobble Hill, shown here. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

BQE designs a fait accompli?

In its application for funds, the city describes a robust community input process. However, BQE-EJC members say they fear the process has been just a “consultation requirement checklist” for the city to tick off.

Three similar, lavishly-rendered designs (named The Terraces, The Lookout, and The Stoop) were presented to community members as a fait accompli, participants said.

“Residents and organizations involved in the Community Visioning Council and the Community Partner Program have found that proposed plans have been pre-determined and decided upon ahead of community engagement events. Residents and organizations find that the process fails to incorporate community priorities, ideas, and voices genuinely,” their letter states.

The coalition, spearheaded by El Puente, UPROSE and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, brings together organizations as disparate as Riders Alliance, Brooklyn Heights Association, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Cobble Hill Association, Bay Ridge Environmental Group, Red Hook Initiative and many others.

Brooklyn BP Antonio Reynoso (center) joins other officials in backing a plan to cap the trench in South Williamsburg as part of a more comprehensive BQE transformation. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

“We don’t have a comprehensive plan,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso told Politico in response to the letter. “Right now, we’re just plugging in holes but with permanent infrastructure.”

State Sen. Andrew Gounardes, Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon and Councilmember Lincoln Restler all issued statements over the weekend agreeing with the coalition.

“The BQE-EJC is right: the communities around the BQE deserve a better process and one that centers environmental justice and brings forth a forward thinking vision for how we get around NYC,” Gounardes said.

DOT’s plan for the reconstruction of BQE Central will involve the destruction of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. The city says it will replace it with something bigger and better. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

BQE-EJC’s letter is just the latest alarm sounded by broad-based community coalitions.

In an August letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Adams administration, 16 community organizations wrote that the plan doesn’t address the BQE as a whole; that it will perpetuate or even exacerbate the pollution caused by the current highway; it will needlessly tear down cherished and landmarked sections of BQE Central neighborhoods and parks to accommodate larger trucks; and it doesn’t consider long-term climate issues, among other problems.

The BQE Environmental Justice Coalition says the city’s BQE proposal ignores the plight of low-income and working-class communities living north and south of BQE Central. Map: NYC DOT

DOT spokesperson Vincent Barone responded to the August letter, telling the Eagle, “We will not wait decades and needlessly spend hundreds of millions of additional taxpayer dollars keeping this outdated structure as it is today. The Adams administration is seizing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to access the federal funding necessary to reimagine and rebuild a safe, resilient BQE Central with expanded green space and better neighborhood connections for pedestrians and cyclists while advancing a corridor-wide vision to address historic inequities along the highway.”

The city’s application makes clear that the BQE Central plan will enlarge the highway to allow access to bigger trucks. “The redesign will result in direct benefits to regional movement of freight by maintaining and enhancing large truck access to commercial and industrial areas in NYC as well as Nassau and Suffolk counties, New Jersey, and ports and rail yards that connect beyond the region,” the application states.

In addition, DOT’s application does not compare its preferred plan with reasonable alternatives proposed by others, such as a smaller BQE in combination with increased use of rail and waterways for freight. Instead, DOT compares the traffic engendered by a bigger BQE Central with the traffic Armageddon that would take place if there was no BQE at all. “Completion of this project will avoid emissions, noise, and safety impacts that would result from full closure of BQE Central,” the application states.

Weigh-In-Motion sensors have been installed on the BQE to keep massively overweight trucks off the deteriorating Triple Cantilever section. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

It’s a ‘boondoggle’

In another slap, the city’s BQE Central plan was described as a “boondoggle” by The United States Public Interest Research Group’s in their “Highway Boondoggles of 2023” report, released Nov. 8.

“Rather than fixing the myriad problems plaguing this road … spending billions of taxpayer dollars to expand the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway does the exact opposite,” USPIRG said. “It will simply ensure that the damage the BQE has inflicted on its surroundings for more than half a century continues.”

The city’s plan was nominated for this dubious honor by the Brooklyn Heights Association, a coalition member. “We hope the selection will highlight the folly of the current plans to expand the Triple Cantilever and BQE Central, doubling down on the destructive infrastructure of the past,” BHA said in an emailed statement.

DOT’s proposal for the reconstruction of BQE Central will involve the destruction of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

Parkland ‘alienation’ process to begin

The city’s plan for the reconstruction of BQE Central will involve the destruction of the landmarked Brooklyn Heights Promenade (with its protected view plane), Harry Chapin Playground, the Columbia Heights Bridge, parts of Squibb Park and an as-yet-unknown amount of the enormously-popular Brooklyn Bridge Park for the years-long construction period.

The city says it will replace these spaces with something bigger and better after the highway is built.

The “parkland alienation process” will begin prior to completion of the Final Environmental Impact Statement, according to the city’s application for funding.

In an unusual move, the entire board of Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation released a letter in June to Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, who is also chair of the park’s board of directors.

At the northern end of Brooklyn Heights, the city’s BQE plan involves the destruction of Harry Chapin Playground (seen here), the Columbia Heights Bridge, parts of Squibb Park, and parkland in DUMBO. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

“Each of the three proposals presented so far would involve the destruction and reconfiguration of substantial portions of existing parkland,” the board wrote. “The overarching problem with the approach the DOT is taking is that you cannot fit the highway and its construction footprint and the Park into the available space.”

Building a temporary “bypass” highway simply compounds the problem, the board said. “The basic geography has not changed since 2018, when similar plans proposed by the DOT were resoundingly rejected by the experts, the community and all the local elected officials — including then-Borough President Adams.”

The city’s plan for the reconstruction of BQE Central (left) will involve “alienating” a portion of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

The park Conservancy echoed the board’s concerns.

“We agree with the Corporation Board that we ‘cannot condone sacrificing the use and enjoyment of such an essential public space for the sake of expanding and perpetuating a highway, particularly when less destructive alternatives have been proposed by others,’” the Conservancy wrote in October.

Gutman: ‘It went off the rails’

The pity of the whole debacle, stakeholders say, is that the Adams administration discarded a previous plan developed by an expert panel commissioned in 2019 by former Mayor Bill de Blasio. The panel issued its recommendations in a January 2020 report after an eight-month in-depth study.

The expert panel’s plan would have funded the most urgent repairs on the Triple Cantilever immediately, but commenced a community outreach program to arrive at a corridor-wide solution. Recommendations included shifting the lane markings on the BQE between Atlantic Avenue and the Brooklyn Bridge to change the roadway from three lanes in each direction to two, and additional monitoring.

Hank Gutman, chair of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and former NYC DOT Commissioner. Eagle file photo

The panel’s recommendations were adopted by the de Blasio administration with then-DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman in 2021. In addition, a proposal to waterproof the cantilever would have kept it safe for an additional 20 years, to buy time to implement the corridor-wide plan.

Local officials were aghast, however, to learn in a City Council meeting in 2022 that most of the money for such repairs had been shifted out of the 2023 budget. Mayor Eric Adams and his DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez had reduced the Fiscal Year 2023 BQE repair budget from $225.1 million to $44.6 million.

Gutman is currently chair of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and board member of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

“We would all like to see federal money awarded to repair the BQE. But it is ridiculous to propose spending billions on the Triple Cantilever while doing nothing of substance to address the neighborhood-destroying impact of the highway everywhere else along the corridor,” Gutman told the Brooklyn Eagle.

“DOT’s proposals have been a series of fanciful drawings which, even if they could be engineered and funded, would do serious damage to Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Promenade for a decade, without making a dent in any of the air and noise pollution,” he said. While the community at one point considered adding an access point from the Promenade to the park, “No one asked the DOT to redesign Brooklyn Bridge Park.”

Three similar, lavishly-rendered designs (named The Terraces, The Lookout, and The Stoop) were presented by DOT to community members as a fait accompli, the BQE-EJC said. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

Gutman said that the letters written by the coalitions of community groups “are obviously correct. There needs to be a community-driven plan to reduce the BQE’s adverse impact — from one end of the corridor to the other — consistent with basic concepts of environmental and economic equity, as well as our hopes for a less car- and truck-dependent future.”

And in the meantime, “The triple cantilever needs urgent repairs to keep it safe long enough to implement that vision,” he said. “This was the conclusion of the Mayor’s Expert Panel in 2020, subsequently adopted by the DOT and City Hall in 2021. But then it went off the rails.”