What to Do with the BQE Ditch
The Columbia Waterfront Association mentioned last week that a primary concern for the land use committee this fall will be the fate of the one-mile stretch of the BQE, known as The Ditch, that separates the Columbia Waterfront from Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. The Brooklyn Paper reported in 2008 that Representative Nydia Velazquez (DGowanus)…
The Columbia Waterfront Association mentioned last week that a primary concern for the land use committee this fall will be the fate of the one-mile stretch of the BQE, known as The Ditch, that separates the Columbia Waterfront from Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. The Brooklyn Paper reported in 2008 that Representative Nydia Velazquez (DGowanus) had obtained $300,000 in public funds for a study to explore possible solutions. Ideas being thrown around at the time included the mayor’s call for housing decks above the highway, or parks and pedestrian bridges. The Paper reported again last June that the Economic Development Corporation had much less ambitious concepts for The Ditch: planted buffers, new street furniture, sidewalk repairs, and other primarily aesthetic improvements. What would you like to see?
Fix the Ditch [Columbia Waterfront Association]
Locals Want BQE Cover-up [Brooklyn Paper]
City Plan for BQE: Less Clean, Less Green [Brooklyn Paper]
Image of early proposal by dlandstudio
Flood it and make it a canal.
This is a very informative website of the NYS DOT which is currently in the middle of several design options for what to do with the raised sections:
https://www.nysdot.gov/portal/page/portal/regional-offices/region11/projects/gowanus-project
Covering these roads will mean some nice vent systems. Love to see where they’re gonna put them.
My partener designed the ones to the Battery Tunnel, see how big they are?
A new subway line to Red Hook.
We need the same kind of cover to be built over the prospect expressway- between 7th ave and 5th ave
As for the trolley comments above- you could run the trolleys from Sunset Park all the way to Greenpoint if you just followed the right of way of the Gowanus and the BQE. You could connect them to the trains that ran close to the waterfront the whole way through
Seems like it’s unanimous here that it should be a park. $300k to study what to do? Why not ask the residents and save the money to study engineering/structural costs to make it so. I would love to see a huge playground, another part being a soccer field and then some simple greenery like bushes, etc., knowing that trees aren’t realistic since their roots have nowhere to go.
And then, how about taking back Hicks St. for local traffic rather than all the commuters who like to run red lights and put our kids in harms way?!?
It would be great to cover the ditch and have a park on top, so there would be extra greenery and pedestrian access to the waterfront. It would work with my other dream of a trolley running from Red Hook to Greenpoint.
Robert Moses did the Big Dig back in the 1950’s. Now we are looking for ways to bring the highway into the present. Covering parts of it with “green roofs” and creating sound barriers in other areas is the way to go. Whether our communities have the political clout to get this done is the question. I hope we don’t have to wait for a disaster to see something done.
> The big dig cost Boston billions.
And worth every penny, no? I bet you Bloomie would find the money if a stadium was involved.