Pressure builds to put brakes on BQE ‘boondoggle’

An increasing number of Brooklyn civic organizations, transportation experts and officials are urging Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state to put the brakes on what they call a rushed and ill-considered city plan to replace and enlarge “BQE Central,” a deteriorated, city-owned 1.5-mile section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street.

NYC recently applied for $800 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for the project. This represents approximately 14% of the estimated total cost of $5.5 billion.

In its push to “get stuff done,” the Adams administration is letting the opportunity of a lifetime to radically reimagine the entire BQE slip away, critics say. 

On Thursday, the new 17-member Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Environmental Justice Coalition released a letter calling on Hochul and state agencies to reject the Adams administration’s plan, and work with communities on “a comprehensive transformation of the BQE to achieve environmental justice and equity in impacted communities.” 

BQE-EJC says the city’s proposal ignores the plight of communities living north and south of BQE Central, which have been bisected by the toxic highway for 80 years. The BQE carries at least 130,000 vehicles every day, 13,000 of them trucks.

“The BQE is currently a source of severe respiratory issues and public health hazards due to the immense traffic volume it carries through neighborhoods inhabited by people of color, low-income individuals, and immigrants,” the BQE-EJC letter reads in part. 

“Congress and federal agencies are allocating major funding to once-in-a-generation major investments in infrastructure, including through the U.S. DOT ‘Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods’ program, to specifically address…