City must pay for Robert Moses’ sins
Between City Council and Mayor de Blasio, there are two solutions on the table for fi xing the BQE — neither of
which seem very attractive. Photo by Kevin Duggan
BROOKLYNPAPER.COM
COURIER L 24 IFE, FEB. 28-MAR. 5, 2020
EDITORIAL
BROOKLYN’S
#1 LOCAL
NEWS SITE
Parks Department fears development will
destroy Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s claim that shadows cast by a massive 39-story
development would not harm plant life at the Brooklyn Botanic
Garden are bogus — according to his own administration!
@BrooklynPaper
LAST WEEK’S TOP STORY:
When he built the Brooklyn
Queens Expressway
during the 1950s,
master planner Robert Moses
stitched the highway together
using existing roadways in
Brooklyn and Queens, and
fresh roads carved through
entire neighborhoods crowded
with people.
The original Kosciuszko
Bridge across the Newtown
Creek, opened in 1939, was
incorporated into the BQE —
as was the triple cantilever
promenade on the Brooklyn
Heights waterfront.
These fi xtures were never
intended to handle the volume
of traffi c that the BQE
would take on from its opening
— and they suffered
mightily from the wear and
tear. The state rebuilt the Kosciuszko
Bridge in a process
that took decades to complete.
Now the city’s marching
forth with a plan to replace
the triple cantilever in
Brooklyn Heights. It’s covered
in rust and has spots
where concrete has eroded
to the point where the metal
rebars are completely exposed.
The city must now pay
for yet another sin of Robert
Moses. Whatever project is
selected will cost the city a
fortune — and plenty of inconvenience
for the rest of
us.
Two options seem to be
favored in a City Council report
released Monday. One
involves burying a smaller
version of the BQE below an
expanded Brooklyn Bridge
Park. It’s certainly the most
aesthetically pleasing of all
options and, at a projected
$3.2 billion cost, one with a
lesser impact on the city’s
bottom line.
The other proposal involves
digging a bypass tunnel
under the streets and
homes of Brooklyn, just like
the “Big Dig” that buried an
entire expressway through
downtown Boston. That plan
would cost at least $11 billion.
It took decades just to complete
the fi rst phase of the
Second Avenue Subway in
Manhattan, and it will take
decades more to expand that
line both uptown and downtown.
With that in mind, it
seems nonsensical to consider
a BQE bypass tunnel as
a feasible option.
We think the fi rst option,
burying the BQE below a
public park, makes the most
sense. It puts the highway
out of sight and out of mind,
and reopens the Brooklyn
Heights waterfront to new
uses benefi ting the community.
But it will cost plenty of
money and time to make this
happen. It’s the penance we
all share in to remedy Moses’
misguided, mid-20th century,
vehicle-centric vision that
tore communities apart for
the sake of the automobile.
/BROOKLYNPAPER.COM