The city is launching a wave of public events to give Bronxites the opportunity to be heard as efforts to reimagine the Cross Bronx Expressway are underway.
The city was awarded $2 million through a U.S. Department of Transportation Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) two-year grant to conduct a study of the expressway, which was announced in December.
The study has not begun yet, and the public engagement process will guide its formation, a NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) spokesperson told the Bronx Times.
According to Mayor Eric Adams, the study will look at ways to reduce pollution and noise, improve safety and sustainability and reconnect communities that had been torn apart by the expressway’s construction. More specifically, the government agencies will look at strategies for decking parts of the expressway — also known as capping — to create new public open space above the highway, according to Adams’ announcement.
“It’s time we prioritize environmental justice and address the harms that 20th century highways have caused communities, largely communities of color, across our city,” NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement. “Together, with the support of Mayor Adams, we are seizing a pivotal opportunity to reconnect communities that have been divided by this highway.”
The Cross Bronx has long been criticized as a project rooted in environmental racism.
Built between 1948 and 1963 under the auspices of famed planner Robert Moses, the roadway’s construction ripped apart largely Black and Latino working-class neighborhoods, destroying homes and displacing thousands. And as a result, residents of the South Bronx, in particular, have been left with disproportionately high asthma rates.
“The Cross-Bronx Expressway is literally and metaphorically a structure of racism from which me and so many others in the Bronx live with the consequences of,” U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, who…
Read the full article here