Why Is a BQE Solution So Hard to Find? Will We Lose Chapin Playground and Access to Fulton Ferry/DUMBO?

In Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker sci-fi trilogy he imagined something called an “SEP field.” A spaceship surrounded by such a field became invisible because it was “Someone Else’s Problem.” The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, it seems, isn’t covered by a single SEP field, but by a multiplicity of them, depending on the point of view. For those of us living near the triple cantilevered portion it is an environmental problem consisting of air pollution, noise, and vibration. For those living elsewhere who rely on the BQE to commute by car, and for businesses that rely on it for delivery or shipment of goods, it is a problem of maintaing and possibly improving traffic flow. To them our environmental concerns are SEP, as are their transportation concerns to us. The City’s Department of Transportation is required to take environmental matters into consideration, but its principal concern, like that of the drivers and business owners, is traffic flow. Those living north and south of the cantilevered portion would like to see the impact of the BQE on their neighborhoods minimized, perhaps by covering the trenched parts or by burying the elevated ones. A complicating factor is that those parts of the BQE are under state control, while the “central” part from Atlantic Avenue to Sands Street is under city control. This means that different sets of elected and administrative officials, who may have different concerns, must be involved in reaching any comprehensive solution.

A particular matter of concern for Brooklyn Heights, Fulton Ferry Historic District, and DUMBO residents and businesses is the Department of Transportation’s plan, described in Mary Frost’s Eagle story, to take down the “bridge” that carries Columbia Heights over the BQE in order to raise it a few inches to accommodate larger trucks. This would also entail destroying the Harry Chapin Playground, which DOT says will be replaced with an improved version. For the duration of the demolition and re-construction it would block direct access between the Heights on one side and on the other the Fulton Ferry Historic District and DUMBO, as well as the northern parts of Brooklyn Bridge Park, including Jane’s Carousel. It would also block access between PS 8 and the Park, and deny use of the Hillside Dog Park to Heights residents and their pets. All this is not to mention the extreme discomfort the demolition and reconstruction process will cause residents of the North Heights. Former DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman is quoted by Ms. Frost as describing this plan as his “favorite proposal for sheer chutzpah.”

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  • Andrew Porter

    Also, the carriage house next to the Chapin Playground is in the process of excavating a basement. Not to mention numerous tourists use Middagh Street to get to Brooklyn Bridge Park.

    Lawsuits, getcher lawsuits here!

  • TeddyNYC

    This video about the BQE was just released on YouTube.

    https://youtu.be/aV9N3RNh0Tk

  • Effective Presenter

    Ewic Adams is NOT smart enough to reconstruct the BQE best to wait until Adams is gone before embarking on this project.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    I hate to say it but the local NIMBYists shot themselves, and everyone else, in the foot when they blocked the DOTs plan back in 16. That would have given us a wider Promenade, more access ramps to the bridges and it would have been nearing completion around now. Sure it would have sucked, but it it would be done.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    EA is a nitwit for sure. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to come up with a plan, only support one. Given the stupidity of the NYC voters, this might not be his last term and his successor might be worse. We cannot wait, the BQE must be dealt with before it starts to collapse, its only a matter of time.

  • Sweeties

    I’ve said, for some time, that the best solution is to dismantle the bridge, to allow a temporary parallel highway to be built, which then switches back onto the existing BQE ramp towards DUMBO. Go look from Furman Street. It’s completely doable, and, admittedly arguably, the least impact solution. I Am Not A Civil Engineer (IANACE).

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/ Claude Scales

    Where is this “temporary parallel highway” to be located? Why does it require dismantling the bridge?

  • Andrew Porter

    In a parallel universe, Claude. Seems simple.

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/ Claude Scales

    Would that it were.

  • Sweeties

    Erect a two-storey, temporary highway over Furman and part of the BBP. Re-route all cantilever section traffic onto that. Removing the bridge allows it to rejoin the BQE, North East of the cantilever section. Would have been easier, if the Pierhouse construction had been paused. But, the layout was always there, and the only major inconvenience was turning Columbia Heights into a dead-end street.

  • Effective Presenter

    Sweetie,

    This appears to be a realistic plan.

    We hope the contractor does not go bankrupt and disappear like the BQE Wythe Ave construction zone debacle around 1986, for at least 3 years the BQE traffic was sent through Williamsburg to get back on at Tillary Street NOTHING going on but large weeds growing all over the abandoned construction zone.

    We would hope for the best.

    Kevin

  • Effective Presenter

    We had thought no one could be worse than Bill DeBlassio and then came Adams,

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/ Claude Scales

    You don’t mind having direct pedestrian and vehicle access between the Heights and Fulton Ferry/DUMBO cut off, along with access from the North Heights and PS 8 to Brooklyn Bridge Park, and loss of the Chapin Playground, for what is likely to be several years?

  • TeddyNYC

    It looks like will it take a collapse or impending collapse that forces the closure of that section to force the city to act no matter the opposition coming from Heights residents.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    Unfortunately you are probably correct.

  • Knight

    Remember when we all met at Plymouth Church … I think it was in 2018 … and the consensus was that we liked a plan by the architectural firm B.I.G.? Whatever happened to that plan? Why was it never adopted? Is it still on the table?

  • Cranberry Beret

    DOT won’t move forward on the full B.I.G. covered highway plan b/c they say there are too many impediments. Conflicts with existing subway & water infrastructure that no one in gov’t wants to pay to move. And tunnels over a certain length require ventilation and other safety features they say aren’t feasible here. (Don’t think DOT even got as far as evaluating conflicts with the buildings on Furman.)

    DOT hired B.I.G. to do the new conceptual designs on the table. Some of the current plans involve multiple shorter tunnels (with open-air portions in between) instead of one long tunnel from the original plan

  • Andrew Porter

    Fascinating. One of the unspoken problems is that NYC is far older than most other cities with big expressway systems, and it’s just not feasible to retrofit a multi-lane system into our 350-year-old city.

    Houston’s population in 1950 was 600K; LA in 1950 was 2M. Both cities had vast undeveloped spaces, unlike NYC, so it was much easier to build expressway systems there.

    Just posted this same comment on YouTube.