The city has received a $5.6 million grant to revitalize the state-owned portions of the BQE.
File photo by Lloyd Mitchell
The city has been awarded a $5.6 million federal “Reconnecting Communities & Neighborhoods” grant to help revamp the northern and southern stretches of the infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
The funding, allotted by the federal Department of Transportation, will support the continued planning of the BQE Connects project, which aims to “reimagine” the 10.6 state-owned miles of the BQE.
The state-owned portion of the interstate is divided into two portions — BQE North, from the Kosciusko Bridge to Sands Street; and BQE South, from Atlantic Avenue to the Verrazzano Bridge. BQE Central, which includes the crumbling Triple Cantilever, is owned by the city, and is part of a separate infrastructure project.
For more than a year, the city has been gathering feedback on plans to help reconnect the Brooklyn communities divided by the BQE, and is set to release its “Corridor Vision Report” this spring.
According to a DOT fact sheet, the federal grant will help choose proposals from that report and “progress those proposal(s) toward implementation in at least two communities/areas within the BQE North and South.”
“These concept proposals seek to improve the quality of life for residents – especially for disadvantaged communities – through reinstituting connections in the local transportation network, improving access to jobs, services, and green space, and bolstering the safety of nonmotorized transportation users,” the sheet reads.
Though the Corridor Vision Report has not yet been released — and it’s impossible to know which proposals may eventually come to fruition — the results of the city’s many community visioning sessions may provide a glimpse of what’s to come.
Brooklynites have proposed capping the sunken portions of the BQE to create parks, improving traffic and pedestrian…
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