Housing Over the BQE? Could Be
Part of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan for squeezing more housing units out of an already-crowded city includes building decks over rail lines and highways. Of particular relevance to Brownstone Brooklyn is a nine-block stretch of the BQE that currently cuts a deep channel through Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. “A platform could be constructed over the…
Part of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan for squeezing more housing units out of an already-crowded city includes building decks over rail lines and highways. Of particular relevance to Brownstone Brooklyn is a nine-block stretch of the BQE that currently cuts a deep channel through Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. “A platform could be constructed over the below-grade section of the BQE to create nine new blocks of housing reconnecting two neighborhoods,” said a mayoral panel. We haven’t had time to fully digest what such a move would mean for the character and connectedness of the two sides of the highway. What do you think? What would it mean for the properties that currently overlook the expressway?
‘Rail’ Big Housing Plan [NY Post]
do like in Paris with the Perephique – cover the damn thing and build parks…. think ballparks, playgrounds, grass! Cost = cheap (relatively) & value for community is immeasurable… it’s such a nonsense that valuable urban real estate like this is wasted on nothing … bring on the parks…
Just a promenade/park would be great there… like the brooklyn height promenade.
if it resembles “the apartments” over the cross bronx it will be horrible.
I cannot imagine the vibration and dust that those places would experience.
I dunno, I quite like the idea of housing but am clueless about the engineering that would have to be done to achieve it. A park would be nice – but are people going to be willing to pay for it?
Serge, your class analysis is off-base, specifically “The whole idea of the sytem is to get the common folks off the street so the ladies and gentlemen can drive around easier”.
No, it’s not. (London) Congestion Charging’s objectives was to make city busses run quicker by reducing the extent to which they were slowed down by private cars.
It’s the poor that always suffer most from congestion.
housing above a tunnel?! really people, does not the subway run beneath much of brownstone brooklyn? If downtown Boston can bury an interchange, surely nyc can figure out how to build a deck over an already recessed roadway. Also, the federal dollars on this would be huge as it is part of the Interastate.
Robert Moses was a sonofabitch AND a visionary, as the recent (possibly still ongoing) exhibition on his work showed–exhibit is a must-see, divided between three museums (one of them is the Museum of the City of NY on the UES). He destroyed thriving city neighborhoods in every borough with his horrible expressways, necessary though they may be. He also built beautiful parks, pools, and playgrounds. An interesting man, to say the least.
This idea to cover the BQE ditch is bold-stroke urban planning at its best–like Boston’s Big Dig, but with the digging already done. LIke Chicago’s fabulous new Millenium Park, built on a deck covering rail-switching yards next to the Art Institue. I say make it mostly green space. Expensive as heck–Millinium Park was HUGELY over budget, I think running more than 600 MM, but totally do-able from an engineering standpoint.
In London the congestion pricing plan is working OK, but the English are used to a very rigid class system where the upper classes have intstitutionalized advantages that the lower classes do not. The whole idea of the sytem is to get the common folks off the street so the ladies and gentlemen can drive around easier. Very British, dunno if it will work here, it is basically a very regressiove tax, as it is basically oine size fits all.
Just me thoughts, that’s all.
“If you want to reduce traffic, build a better subway and ban cars altogehter from midtown. Tax won’t cut it, since same people won’t stop using their cars and the city will steal some more money from it’s citizens.”
R-
The point isn’t to turn Midtown into a pedestrian mall- it’s to make the traffic move faster. If you take out 15% of the cars the rest will move much faster.
The added benefits of cleaner air and extra revenue available for more mass transit are icing on the cake.
Wouldn’t “western Bed-Stuy” be called “Clinton East”?