B’klyn pols hit BQE inaction
Rip state for failing to use fed funds to retool major stretches
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso blasted the state Transportation Department Monday for failing to plan for a redesign of portions of the BQE that cut through Williamsburg, Greenpoint and portions of southern Brooklyn, despite the availability of federal funding.
“The state DOT and our governor have decided to relegate these communities to continued injustices on our environment,” Reynoso said at a Williamsburg press conference in the highway’s shadow. “Our kids will continue to have to play on either side of the BQE sucking in these fumes,”
“We have an opportunity, with the passage of a once-in-a-generation infrastructure bill by the federal government, to remedy the environmental injustice that was imposed upon us,” Reynoso added.
The BQE is one of the city’s most traveled arteries, carrying some 150,000 vehicles and 15,000 trucks per day.
The city Department of Transportation, which controls only the portion of the BQE that skirts the edge of Brooklyn Heights (photo), has committed to a redesign of the roadway that currently threads under the the Brooklyn Promenade.
That project — which involves long overdue repairs to the socalled triple-cantilever of overlapping roadways — is due to be completed in 2032.
The remainder of the interstate — which was built in the ’50s under the auspices of New York’s road kingpin, Robert Moses — passes through neighborhoods rather than around them, cutting Brooklyn’s historically less-affluent and largely nonwhite neighborhoods in two.
Those portions of the highway, north and south of the Promenade, are controlled by the state DOT — which confirmed to transit blog Streetsblog last week that it has “no plans” to redesign.
The agency told The Daily News Monday that it would continue to work on the safety and integrity of the highway as currently designed.
“The New York State Department of Transportation is committed to the safety of the traveling public on the entirety of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,” agency spokesman Joe Morrissey said, “which is why we are providing technical assistance to the city in its project to replace the triple cantilever.”
“This portion has been identified as requiring immediate action to address structural conditions, and the department will continue to assist in the preparation and advancement of the environmental review process and will support the city’s application for federal funding.” he added.
The state has also invested some $1.2 billion toward safety improvements in the past decade along the portions of the highway under its control, the department said.
But for politicians like Councilwoman Jennifer Gutierrez, who represents Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood, the issue is about more than driver safety.
“Since Robert Moses, it has been our communities that have to breathe the fumes, that have to deal with the environmental issues of this racist highway,” she said at Monday’s presser. “It’s us dealing with the risk every single day and not state DOT.”
“For many of us here, the damage is done — we don’t stand here for ourselves, we stand here for our descendants.”