Plans are underway for the rehabilitation of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and much progress has been made since the public scoping meetings back in June. At last night’s Technical Advisory Committee meeting, project manager Peter King discussed some of the proposals for what could happen along the BQE. (more…)
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BQE Rehab Meeting Recap
Today, the New York State Department of Transportation held two project scoping sessions about the two-decade rehabilitation of the 1.5 mile stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from Atlantic Avenue to Sands Street, and local community members turned up to express their desires and concerns.
The meetings began with a brief introduction regarding the need for the reconstruction work, and explaining the timeline and process the project will follow. Here’s the PowerPoint presentation: [PDF]
Today’s meetings are the first step in completing the environmental impact statement process. The developers have spilt the project’s review process into what they call two “tiers.” The first tier, which is expected to last until August 2012, will focus on developing the final project design and alternatives.
Following the presentation, community members stepped up to the microphone to express issues and ideas they would like to be considered by the developers. Suggestions after the jump. (more…)
Big BQE Public Meeting Monday
The first step in the two-decade project to reconstruct the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street begins Monday night, when New York State Department of Transportation officials present the project’s draft summary.
The two public project scoping sessions, as they are called, will be held in the Pfizer Auditorium of the Dibner Building at 5 MetroTech Center. The afternoon session will run from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. and the evening session from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. (more…)
This week’s community calendar
(BHB/Sarah Portlock)
The next two weeks are busy for community meetings — there’s the usual Community Board business, as well as updates on the BQE triple cantilever reconstruction project and city Department of Transportation’s ongoing project to rework Tillary Street and surface transit in Downtown. Here’s the calendar:
(1) Tonight, Monday, at 6 pm, is Community Board 2’s parks committee meeting. But district manager Rob Perris said there’s nothing slated for the agenda. Regardless, the meeting is at Brooklyn Hospital, dining rooms A and B (DeKalb Avenue, at St. Felix Street).
(2) Tomorrow, Tuesday night, is CB2’s transportation committee meeting, at 6 pm at St. Francis College’s first-floor boardroom (180 Remsen St., between Clinton and Court streets). On the agenda is an application for a new sidewalk café at the Brooklyn Heights Wine Bar. And, the committee will review the environmental impact statement for the BQE’s triple cantilever reconstruction project. (For more information about a separate BQE meeting, see below.)
Recap of BQE triple cantilever meeting
On Tuesday night, state Transportation Department engineers officially kicked off the two-decade reconstruction project of a 1.5-mile stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that stretches from Sands Street to Atlantic Avenue and underneath our own Promenade.
The project will cost $295 million, with 80 percent of funding largely coming from the federal government and 20 percent from the state, said DOT spokesman Adam Levine.
Shovels won’t go into the ground until 2020 — yes, 2020, and not 2018 like engineers estimated last October — but project planning starts now, project manager Peter King told the 50 or so stakeholders who attended the meeting at Polytechnic University. Loosely quoting Churchill, he said, “We are nearing the end of the beginning.” (The timeline is available here.)
We’re getting a copy of the full Power Point presentation and will post it for you on Wednesday, but in the meantime, here are some highlights:
Update! Here’s the PowerPoint presentation: [pdf]
BQE triple cantilever meeting Tuesday
This just in! The state Department of Transportation will host its first stakeholders meeting about upcoming construction plans for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway’s 1.5-mile triple-cantilevered highway that extends under the Promenade and above Furman Street. The meeting is at 6:30 pm in the Dibner Auditorium at 5 Metrotech Center, in Downtown.
“The project team and the stakeholders will be active participants in the meeting, and any public attendees are welcome to observe. There will be an opportunity at the end for public comment,” said agency spokesman Adam Levine.
The construction project is particularly sensitive because traffic engineers must figure out how to reroute the 160,000 cars that travel on the roadway each day, theoretically without compromising construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park. The project isn’t slated to break ground until 2018, but engineers have said they hope to have a plan by 2015.
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