March 6–12, 2020 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 9
City weighs automatic heavy truck enforcement on BQE
D’Ulisse, commanding officer
of the NYPD Highway
District at a City Hall hearing
about the BQE.
Police have issued 97
weight-related summonses
for trucks and have taken 23
of those vehicles out of service
along the BQE since Mayor
Bill de Blasio ordered cops to
up enforcement of the heavy
rigs along the roadway on
Feb. 3.
But officers are forced to
rely largely on their intuition
to pick out offenders — essentially
pulling over drivers they
suspect may be overweight,
and then measuring their loads
using mobile scales — and
officials at the DOT want to
partner with their state counterparts
to install automatic
sensors along the aging roadway,
which would help capture
offenders who slip past highway
patrol, officials said.
The new sensors — known
as weigh-in-motion or WIM
— are capable of automatically
detecting an overweight
load, while also capturing license
plates and US Department
of Transportation registration
numbers, which are
fed in near real-time to police,
much like speed and
red light cameras, according
to D’Ulisse.
“That’s key to get every single
truck that’s overweight automatically,
almost like a red
light summons or a speed camera
summons,” he said.
De Blasio’s directive to increase
truck enforcement followed
the release of a report by
an expert panel he convened
to study the roadway, which
found that the crumbling triple
cantilever section between
Atlantic Avenue and Sands
Street could become unsafe
to travel on within the next
five years.
The panel also recommended
reducing the highway’s
lanes from three in each
direction to two, but de Blasio
has so far been skeptical
of that proposal.
The panel found that out
of the 15,000 trucks that traverse
freeway every day, a
small fraction of overweight
freight carriers were causing
disproportionate damage to
the structure.
Trucks are limited to a maximum
of 80,000 pounds, or
40 tons, along the BQE, but
some sensors the panel used
while studying the roadway
found that some trucks were
loading as much as 170,000
pounds!
the many residents — mostly
white — that packed into the
City Hall hearing room in the
middle of a weekday.
“When I look at the room,
it’s packed, there’s no diversity
here and for me it’s a challenge,”
said Rodriguez. “I want
to highlight the importance
that underserved members
of the area are listened to loud
and clear. That they also get
engaged in this conversation,
before we finalize any plan or
how we’re going to be fixing
the BQE.”
One Sunset Park pol asked
a senior rep of Arup whether
the firm could also provide an
analysis for his nabe, where
the elevated highway section
has ravaged low-income communities
for decades.
“You really want us to look
at the whole corridor, and not
just Brooklyn Heights, to really
think about how we can
make multiple communities
part of this discussion,” said
councilman Carlos Menchaca.
“Red Hook and Sunset Park are
about 3.5-4 miles of the corridor,
and so, is there in your contract
the ability for us to have
conversations about this post,
or do you just kind of disappear
from here on out.”
Trent Lethco, a principal of
Arup said that the firm would
be willing to meet with both
Menchaca and Reynoso to analyze
the sections of the highway
in their districts.
“If you would like us to
come out and give a presentation,
we’d be happy to do
that,” Lethco said.
Photo by Meg Capone
The city wants to stop overweight trucks going on
the BQE by installing automatic sensors along the
highway.
Get rewarded when you check with us.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
They’re looking to tip the
scales in the city’s favor!
The city wants to install
automatic weight monitors
along the Brooklyn-Queens
Expressway to help highway
patrol catch truckers hauling
overweight loads down the aging
interstate, most of whom
get away with their outlaw behavior
due to the cops’ lowtech
surveillance equipment —
their eyeballs, according to the
city’s chief highway cop.
“We are touching just the
tip of it,” said Inspector Steven
BQE...
Continued from page 1
quarter-mile trench where the
expressway runs through Cobble
Hill and Carroll Gardens
to allow for a so-called “urban
boulevard” featuring bike
and bus lanes.
That plan proposed via the
Council report could cost as
much as $11 billion, and would
deck over a far longer section
than the scheme Reynoso requested,
the legislator complained.
“The decking over the areas
south of my district is three
times the size we’re asking
for,” said Reynoso.
Proposals to revamp the
BQE have focused on the triple
cantilever structure, which is
rapidly deteriorating and will
become unsafe by 2025, according
to a report.
Several proposals, including
by Comptroller Scott Stringer
and architecture firm Bjarke
Ingels Group have included
sprawling urban parks along
the tiered structure and the
trench to its south, while ignoring
the interstate highway
in poorer communities further
north and south.
The chair of the Council’s
Transportation Committee,
Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez
(D–Manhattan) echoed
the concerns that working class
Brooklynites were left out of
the conversation about the
BQE, noting that it was easier
for wealthier residents to push
for improvements, including
Trucks can also violate the
law if they carry less than
80,000 pounds on smaller vehicle,
which results in more pressure
being applied to the road
surface, D’Ulisse noted.
The city agency installed
the first such WIM technology
on the Alexander Hamilton
Bridge between the Bronx
and Manhattan in 2014, and
two more in Queens in 2016,
according to US Department
of Transportation documents,
but the city’s DOT Commissioner
Polly Trottenberg expressed
interest in rolling out
the idea on the BQE and beyond.
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