Improvements to this vital piece of infrastructure are long overdue. The BQE was originally designed to carry 47,000 vehicles a day but now carries an incredible 150,000 vehicles daily, including 15,000 trucks.

In particular, BQE Central, a 1.5-mile stretch of roadway that runs from Atlantic Avenue to Sands Street, and includes the Brooklyn Heights triple cantilever, is deteriorating rapidly and could be unsafe to drive on in the next five years if work to fix it does not begin soon.

This process will not only focus on the triple cantilever in Brooklyn Heights but the entire corridor throughout Brooklyn — from the Verrazzano Bridge up to the Kosciuszko Bridge, with an eye towards addressing the impacts of trucking, last-mile warehousing, and freight movement as we try to undo the harms wrought by Robert Moses across so many communities many generations ago.

There’s a lot of work to be done, and that work begins now. The DOT is holding public engagement sessions open to the public, including one THIS Thursday, 10/6, from 6-8pm via Zoom. All are welcome; participants are asked to pre-register at bit.ly/bqekickoff2.

Nearly every neighborhood in our district, spanning from Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights up through Vinegar Hill, is affected by the BQE. As the work to repair and reimagine the BQE begins, here are the top four issues I’ll be focused on:

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix the many harms caused by the BQE — if we don't seize this moment, it may be lost forever;
The urgent work to fix the triple cantilever should not maintain the status quo of the existing structure — we need to be bold and imaginative in what we build here next;
There must be corridor-wide discussions with each of the affected communities along the BQE to focus on equitably repairing the damage caused by the highway and centering the vision that each community has for their portion of the highway; and
No permanent solution to the future of the BQE can be devised without addressing the impact of trucking, last-mile warehousing, and the movement of freight in and throughout the highway corridor.

This is an opportunity to rethink how people, goods, and services move around our city — and I look forward to continuing this transformative work.

Sincerely,