What to know about Cross Bronx and Brooklyn-Queens Expressway plans

Two of New York City’s most congested expressways are being eyed for extreme makeovers — with implications for the future of transportation in the region and beyond.

The city’s Department of Transportation is pondering what to do with those highways, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Cross Bronx Expressway — both mid-20th-century projects spearheaded by the region’s master builder Robert Moses, whose vision helped turbocharge car culture, drive suburbanization and create modern-day Long Island.

Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams highlighted a “historic” study to be done by the state and city to examine the future of the Cross Bronx. Adams said that the study, with $2 million from the federal government, would aim to find ways to reduce pollution emitted by motor vehicles that travel the expressway, stitch neighborhoods back together that have been bifurcated by the Cross Bronx, build new parkland, and cut down on crashes.

That could be done perhaps by decking parts of the road in the style of Boston’s Big Dig. The aim is to have a plan to present by 2024 for the short and long term.

“The Cross Bronx doesn't work for the Bronx residents, but I want to be clear. It does not only impact the Bronx residents, it impacts our entire city. It doesn't work for drivers. For far too long it has been nicknamed ‘America's Parking Lot,’ ” Adams said, adding: “I wish we could go back in time to stop the Cross Bronx when it was built. But the second best time to fight a wrong is today. And that today is right in front of us.”

Earlier this month, the city released a “menu of design ideas” for the BQE, which included returning the expressway to six lanes of traffic by bringing back two lanes that were recently eliminated. The prospect of widening, rather than narrowing, the expressway drew immediate ire from some local groups who want to see less driving rather than more.

Also on the table, at least for the 1.5-mile part of the BQE, also known as Interstate 278, that is controlled by the city: landscaping and improvements to a promenade near Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Adams aims to begin construction within five years on fixes to the heavily congested highway, with its city-owned triple cantilever section in Brooklyn also being significantly overdue for infrastructure repairs.

No set plans for either expressway

As of now, there are no concrete plans yet for either expressway, only plans to make plans, with work years away at the earliest. But at the core of the deliberations are fundamental questions of how people should get around.

How big should highways and roadways be? How much should driving be incentivized, or discouraged? Should motorists be nudged toward mass transit? What about the collateral harms of the roadways — smog, divided neighborhoods, gridlock?

Plans to make over the expressways arrive as city roads become less hospitable to drivers and private vehicles — with an eye toward public transportation, pedestrians, cycling and open spaces. Outdoor dining, expanded during the pandemic, is now permanent, removing parking spaces from circulation. Traffic lanes on Fifth Avenue have been carved out for people walking during the holiday season, and Adams announced plans to permanently "reimagine" the avenue from Bryant Park to Central Park with nondrivers in mind. Congestion pricing to discourage driving from below 60th Street in Manhattan is looming.

In their current forms, both the Cross Bronx and Brooklyn-Queens expressways are “probably the worst, delay-wise, and most consistently congested highway sections in the entire city,” said Michael Shenoda, an assistant professor of civil engineering technology at Farmingdale State College.

The road work will lead to “extreme negative impacts to the traffic and surrounding neighborhoods in the short-term during construction for long-term improvements in these areas,” he said in an email.

The impact of widening or adding lanes

According to Shenoda, roughly 82,056 vehicles daily in 2019 used Interstate 95 northbound from the Macombs Road overpass over the Cross Bronx to the end of the Cross Bronx Expressway, where it merges with I-95/U.S. 1 and crosses into Manhattan.

On the BQE, an average 68,488 cars traveled south daily from Exit 30, Flushing Avenue, to Exit 32, Williamsburg Bridge, in 2019.

Lisa Tyson, executive director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, a nonprofit activist group, said investments ought to be made in public transportation, and not on widening or adding lanes on the BQE. She said adding lanes pushes more motorists onto the roads, which increases pollution and poses health risks, such as increased asthma rates.

“We need to be able to get [drivers of] cars and trucks onto the rail and you need to have as many options that are affordable, because right now the train is so unaffordable,” she said.

Tyson was flicking to the theory of induced demand, which posits that as roads get wider and can accommodate even greater traffic volumes, there will be more driving than before as motorists are incentivized to use the bigger roads on the belief that the additional lanes have reduced congestion. It’s a vicious and counterintuitive cycle, according to the theory.

As for the impact on Long Islanders, former city Department of Transportation Commissioner Lucius Riccio said it’s hard to know until the plans are formalized.

“But since you can't get off Long Island without going through Queens,” he wrote in an email, “any major work in the City will affect some LI drivers."