DOT Announces Vision to Reimagine and Repair BQE until 2040, Partly by Reducing Oversized Truck Traffic

     by Yehudit Garmaise

     Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this morning four new strategies that are part of the vision of the Department of Transportation (DOT) to extend the life for another 20 years  of the corridor of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) that holds the Triple Cantilever and the cantilever, itself.

     The 0.4 mile-long Triple Cantilever, which was built between 1944 and 1948, carries the BQE with three eastbound lanes that are above three westbound lanes, with the Brooklyn Promenade on top.

    The corridor that holds the Triple Cantilever, which the mayor said is “a crucial section of the BQE that we have to protect,” needs preservation and maintenance “to make sure that safety is preserved,” said the mayor, who explained that “right-sizing lanes, waterproofing, and enforcing weight limits of trucks” are also part of the vision of the DOT.

     In addition to repair and monitoring of the Triple Cantilever, which some say is crumbling, Mayor de Blasio said that what the city most needs to do to protect the safety of the BQE is to reduce its use by large trucks, whose excessive weight overloads and damages the structure.

     “We have to take big turn away from the massive trucks that too often have caused problems not just for the BQE, but for life in the city,” the mayor said.

     “Just as Mayor de Blasio challenged us to reimagine and reexamine how we move people in this city to reduce our dependence on private cars, we need to do exactly the same thing with freight for large diesel trucks,” said DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman, who explained that the growth in e-commerce that was caused by the pandemic has only caused freight demands to grow.

     “There is no reason to believe [the freight demands of e-commerce] is going to change, but we cannot solve that problem by putting more big diesel trucks on our city streets,” Gutman explained. “[Large trucks destroy our aging infrastructure, they pollute our air, they contribute to climate change, and they absolutely ruin the quality of life in residential communities where they have no business legally being.”

     Instead of continuing to rely on large diesel trucks for freight, Gutman proposed that the city increase its reliance on both trains and boats to transport consumer goods.

     “We can increase our use of rail, and we can turn back to our rivers, which were our original highways, and use them just as we are now doing for passenger ferries, we can do for freight ferries,” Gutman said.

    Instead of large, oversized trucks making local deliveries for ends of the journeys of consumer goods, Gutman envisioned the creation of “intermodal distribution centers in all five boroughs, where things can be offloaded into carts and small electric vehicles for last-mile deliveries.”

     “This is our vision of how to move away from truck traffic and move things around New York City in a better way, a greener way, a cleaner way, a safer way,” the mayor said.