The green mile

Any shedding of tears for the Sheridan Expressway will be short, like the highway itself — slated for a teardown under a rightthinking commitment by Gov. Cuomo that would aid a struggling Bronx area plagued by truck traffic and the ills it brings. First, building on existing plans from the city and community groups, the state Department of Transportation would reincarnate the stump of a highway — which connects the Bruckner and Cross Bronx expressways for scant more than a mile — as a slower, gentler urban boulevard.

Concrete and steel barriers will come down. In their place: crosswalks, pausing at treelined medians, connecting the Crotona neighborhood to a ribbon of parks that local visionaries have built along the Bronx River, complete with picnic areas, sports fields and canoe landing.

Then, correcting a second longstanding environmental injustice, the fleets of trucks rumbling to and from the essential Hunts Point food wholesale market to the south will for the first time have somewhere to go to and from the Bruckner other than spewing through local streets where kids play and breathe, courtesy of a new bypass that will lead straight to the market complex.

Let debate flourish over where precisely to locate the Hunts Point highway interchange.

Cross fingers that, even if Cuomo gets the $700 million forecast for next year’s state budget, including $97 million secured last year to jumpstart the transformation, he’ll manage to find another $1.1 billion to get the job done.

Details, details. What matters first and foremost is ownership by the governor of a cause that Bronx locals have pleaded for over the course of many decades, asking simply to enjoy cleaner air and pleasant parks as entitlements of everyday urban living.

Throwing into reverse gear history that dates back to Sheridan builder Robert Moses — who, in shaping the city, did a lot right and a lot wrong — drivers will finally take a backseat to neighborhood residents and their long-snubbed needs.