Tuesday Morning City Council Hearing on BQE

By on February 22, 2020 10:56 pm in BQE rehab, Government

While the expert panel appointed by Mayor de Blasio recently released its report on renovation of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the City Council also commissioned a report on that topic by the urban design firm ARUP. That report will be released this Tuesday morning, February 25 at 10:00 a.m., at a public hearing on “The Future of the BQE” in the Council Chambers at City Hall. Representatives of the Department of Transportation will be there, and will answer questions from council members and other elected officials. There will also be testimony by representatives of the Brooklyn Heights Association and other community groups.

Before the hearing there will be a press conference at 9:00 a.m. in City Hall Park, south of City Hall, with Council Speaker Corey Johnson. All are invited, as they are to the hearing afterward. The BHA is encouraging as many as possible to attend both the press conference and the public hearing, or either. Although the highway on the Promenade originally proposed by the DOT seems no longer a threat, the BHA writes,”we still have a fight on our hands over the future of the highway and how to transform our neighborhood and the entire corridor for the better!”

If you can attend either the press conference or the hearing, or both, please RSVP here.

Share this Story:

, , , , ,

  • CassieVonMontague

    The City Council proposed an $11 billion tunnel: https://nyti.ms/2SSsoqo

  • Steve

    Great news for those who will be moving to Brooklyn Heights 10-15 years from now.

  • Nomcebo Manzini

    Not quite buried (tee hee) in the article is the REAL solution – one that is affordable and predictable and likely to get State “sign-off” – the “capped highway” I’ve been praying for ever since “the BETTER WAY” movement was born.

    Not that it’s likely to move the needle much, but you can look for the upcoming BHA meeting to provide a loud and obvious echo for last spring’s community gathering at Plymouth Church!!

    The tunnel that – of necessity – gets the headline is as DOA as 6 lanes of traffic in place of the Promenade was,

    The “average Joe” who came up with a very much “above average idea” 10 or 20 years ago – certainly comparable to the Council’s consultants proposal can take a bow, but sane people in both government and the building world will point out that –

    YES, we may have learned a thing or 2 since Boston’s Big Dig started, … but a $10 Billion plan (which all will multiply by 2 or by 5 to get a more realistic bottom line) is … not gonna happen.

    Somebody on this Blog had a good zinger about when the Clark St. station will get closed – something like “How many years will it take the MTA to figure out which 8 months the station should be closed?!”

    I just hope that City and State can get on the same page BEFORE there’s a large or small catastrophic failure affecting the cantilever.

  • Jorale-man

    Methinks their plans were leaked to the NY Times before the “official” press conference tomorrow.

    Whatever becomes of these proposals, it’s good to see that opposition remains firm to the promenade expressway plan. The capped highway seems like the more viable solution at this point. Maybe they floated the tunnel to make the second idea seem more realistic (the cheaper alternative).

  • Daddyo

    That’s pretty ambitious. Big Dig in Beantown took about 20 years!

  • BrooklynHeightzer

    The work on the tunnel should have been started at least 10 years ago. Now they need to come up with an alternative plan to keep BQE alive before it crumbles to dust, and dust is what will be left of the BH section of the BQE (if nothing is done to it now) by the time the “proposed” tunnel is finished, which will take no less than 15 years to complete.

  • Jorale-man

    Yes, as it’s been often pointed out, they should have built a new BQE before starting the park. Perhaps that would have made it a lot easier to build the part right over it instead. 20/20 hindsight…

  • Andrew Porter

    Hindsight is 20/20, eh?

    Then there’s the elephant in the room: sea-level rise.

  • Mike Suko

    This is a distraction and worse. Amounts (remember that the “posted” amount is almost universally thought to be a joke, and there are related costs that no one even attempts to gauge) on the order of $5 or $10 billion are on a different order of magnitude from park construction.

    You and I may look at a damaged (vandalized ?) tree with sadness, but NYC’s budget makes replacing it like buying a ream of paper as an individual – truly, a minuscule expense.

    Similarly, “removing” the berms and then restoring them is – roughly 1/100 of 1% of the figures being bandied about.

    BUT count on the BBP and gullible, ill-informed (hearts in the right place) people to say, “But you CAN’T use ‘park land’ because it’ll ‘waste’ so very much money!”

    TRUTH IS – as they say – “not so much,” i.e., the “waste” is annoying, but the dollars involved are puny.

    I’m glad that we’ve had 10+ years of BBP as it is. Bloomberg (I think) AND local activists did the right thing in building what they did WHEN they did. “What if” thinking is valuable, but not when it becomes an excuse to do nothing – i.e., postponing worthwhile projects until “all is known.” That’s … NEVER!

    OTOH, the work done in BBP over the last 12 months is unconscionable. The Park’s leadership should have some salary & bonus $ clawed back!