City Explores Building Well-Lit Plazas, Bike Lanes Under The BQE

BROOKLYN, NY — City officials are exploring adding bike lanes, well-lit public plazas and other streetscape redesigns to the areas under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, New York City Department of Transportation officials said on Thursday.

The ideas were released in a new report called "BQE North and South: Safe, Sustainable, Connected," which outlines the city’s vision to reimagine the BQE in Brooklyn, which runs through Brooklyn from Bay Ridge to East Williamsburg, and create infrastructure to reconnect the neighborhoods divided by the highway.

The 154-page report is the result of two years of outreach, including more than 400 local brainstorming events hosted by 16 different local organizations in seven different languages, DOT officials said.

In addition to wanting to reconnect neighborhoods, the city said the redesign aims to make the highway's infrastructure more resilient and improve street safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

“The bold concepts outlined in this report would invest in working-class neighborhoods and reconnect communities long-divided by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway,” said NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez.

One of the main ideas in the report is the covering of the trenched sections of the BQE in Carroll Gardens, Williamsburg, and Bay Ridge to build parks and plazas above the highway.

This would be more of a long-term plan that would take federal funding and several years to complete, but some of the smaller projects — like shortening crosswalks, creating pedestrian medians, building protected bike lanes and bus lanes along the corridor — could be completed faster.

The report also outlines several ways the city could reuse the spaces under the BQE, such as building outdoor markets, public plazas, bike parking, electric vehicle charging, metered parking, and truck delivery microhubs.

“Through a corridor-wide approach, we can equitably address safety, public space, and connectivity needs for neighborhoods that have often been left out of conversations around the BQE," Rodriguez said.

Now that the city has published its concepts for redesigning the BQE, officials are on to the next step — soliciting further public feedback and conducting further studies on the feasibility of these projects, which they will do using a $5.6 million federal grant.

“The Brooklyn Queens Expressway has long been a symbol of environmental injustice and systemic racism, cutting through and harming our communities for decades,” Michelle de la Uz, the executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, said. "Work to undo this painful legacy is critical."

See the full report here.