Cobble Hill community activist Roy Sloane has proposed re-routing the BQE through what would be the longest highway tunnel in North America, taking it from the Navy Yard, under parts of Fort Greene, Downtown Brooklyn, and Boerum Hill, to the Prospect Expressway.
YourNabe.com: The extraordinarily ambitious two-and-a-half-mile tunnel is one of several options for replacing the beleaguered highway that is being considered by the state Department of Transportation, but it is already emerging as a favorite.
“It’s brilliant,” said Allen Swerdlowe, an architect participating in state-sponsored design workshops, who praised the tunnel idea because it would discourage traffic-enraged drivers from exiting the highway as they do now and driving on local streets.
Swerdlowe does not, however, agree with Sloane’s idea of keeping the existing stretch of the BQE, including the cantilevered portion below the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, that would be bypassed by the tunnel, open for local traffic. He believes that this will just eventuate in additional traffic volume. Instead, he suggests as a possibility shutting down this roadway and converting it to recreational use, in the manner of the High Line in Manhattan.
Other, shorter tunnel proposals would bypass the troubled cantilevered stretch, but would link to the “ditch” carrying the BQE parallel to Hicks Street past Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, and would involve tunneling under at least part of the Heights.
