Following L Train About-Face, Brooklyn Heights Association Calls for Halt to BQE Repair Plan

Inspired by the sudden reversal of plans for the L train shutdown, the Brooklyn Heights Association sent a strongly worded letter to the Department of Transportation Monday asking them to jettison their “unacceptable” plan to dismantle the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and run a six-lane highway through the Heights to repair the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Here are the highlights:

The Brooklyn Heights Association implores you and your colleagues to stop work on the DOT’s unacceptable “Promenade Highway” plan. Instead, we ask DOT to convene a panel of outside engineering and transportation design experts to rethink the BQE project this winter. As we have come to grips with the DOT’s stunning announcement in September that it wants to fix the BQE by erecting a six-lane interstate highway in our midst for six or more years, we have realized that the DOT’s approach is deeply problematic not merely because of the havoc its construction plan will wreak but also because its end result looks backward and not forward: DOT seeks to rebuild (and modernize a bit) exactly what was built from 1951-54. But a highway that made sense for the NY metropolitan area for the last 75 years cannot possibly be the right way to serve the region’s transportation needs for the next 75 years.

Read the entire letter here.

What do you think — especially about what a “21st century regional transportation solution” would look like in the age of electric vehicles, self-driving trucks, drones, Uber and Amazon?

Related Stories

• The Story of Brooklyn’s Grand Stage, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade
• The Promenade Should Stay, Locals Agree. But What Should Be Done With the BQE?
• Hated, Beloved and Highly Used: The Past, Present and Future of the Brooklyn-Transforming BQE

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