The BQE’s triple cantilever section in Brooklyn Heights.
File Photo by Todd Maisel
New York City will finally start enforcing weight limits for vehicles on the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway next week, doling out hefty fines to the owners of overweight trucks.
Starting Monday, Nov. 13, the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) will begin issuing $650 fines to the owners of trucks traveling northbound on the BQE weighing more than 80,000 pounds. Trucks are weighed on the move using automated sensor technology synced with license plate readers, called “weigh-in-motion” (WIM), which has never before been deployed on an American highway.
The sensors are only deployed on the city-owned section of the BQE between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street in Brooklyn, which includes the “triple cantilever” through Brooklyn Heights. The rest of the highway in Brooklyn and Queens is owned by the state.
Overweight trucks on the northbound BQE have been getting warnings since the sensors were installed three months ago, but now will start receiving fines. Enforcement has not begun in the southbound direction, but DOT says it will start in the coming months after another a three-month period of warnings.
The warnings appear to have made a difference, DOT contends. For instance, in the first week of warnings in August, 344 overweight truck drivers were automatically sent warnings, but that number declined to just 153 by the end of October.
“Overweight trucks cause wear and tear that requires costly maintenance and reduces the lifespan of our roads and bridges,” said DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez. “We’ve seen a sharp decline in overweight vehicles since we began issuing warnings in August and we expect that the program will continue to remove overweight trucks from our streets.”
The news comes as the Adams administration tries to figure out how to redesign the city-owned section of the highway, and in the meantime forestall it from collapsing….
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