In 2018, when Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a plan to rehabilitate the 1.5-mile cantilevered section of the BQE, my then-9-year-old asked an important question:
“So it’s a road?”
Yes.
“To make it be a road again?”
Yes. Same road, same lanes, same 4-6 mph crawls, same annual pollution weighing 80,000 African elephants entering our lungs, air, water.
Now Mayor Mamdani has announced his own $4 billion package to keep that road. It promises 10 years of disruption and construction and two new roads so the old road lasts, as-is, through 2080.
That’s $2.7 billion per mile.
When Phase One of the Second Ave. subway cost $2.5 billion per mile, NYC became a global laughingstock for infrastructure costs. But that subway made life greener, more affordable, and more functional. We are about to spend $2.7 billion per mile and a decade of construction on a road that leaves us no better off.
Preserving the BQE also works against every modern premise of urban transportation. It rolls out the red carpet for cars and maintains a diesel truck corridor through our densest residential neighborhoods. We charge drivers $9 to enter Manhattan because fewer cars are better, yet plan to spend billions to lock in high-volume traffic for generations. We cannot hold both positions.
But the real heartbreak is the math. This project buys New Yorkers 1.5 miles of hot asphalt at an investment of $30,000 per daily vehicle. It costs 4½ times Mamdani’s signature initiative: a fast bus plan to serve 2.75 million daily riders. Families will be told there is no budget for daycare seats, bus lanes, street trees, or subway elevators because we spent the money on a road.
Proponents argue that “the BQE is a critical freight corridor”, but nine out of 10 vehicles on it are not trucks. And trucks themselves aren’t an act of nature. We’ve spent decades investing in infrastructure to make it cheap to drive freight into the city, treating every load as “vital.” Concrete for housing? Sure. Same-day delivery of a Swiffer? Nope. Shifting noncritical packaged goods into a system of blue highways, micromobility, and slower, overnight delivery could remove the need for a mega-road entirely.
Then there’s who pays.
Roughly 57% of NYC households do not own a car. Brooklyn’s car-free share is higher, and those families earn half as much as car owners. Financed exclusively with city tax dollars, a majority-car-free population is footing the bill to preserve vehicular traffic through their neighborhoods for generations.
Worse, the cantilever is just a down payment — the first in a string of BQE renovations that will cost taxpayers tens of billions in coming years. Money that could be used for buses or sustainable freight. Every dollar spent shoring up this deteriorating asphalt is a failure of both policy and imagination.
It isn’t too late.
First, fix the governance. Jurisdictional technicalities should never force counterproductive investments. The mayor should use his abundant political capital to align President Trump and Gov. Hochul around a more economical and future-forward path, unify governance under a new authority, or continue maintenance on the cantilever as-is pending a friendlier USDOT in 2029.
In the meantime, put the alternatives to a public vote. What would it look like — and how much money would it save — to bring the highway to grade, converting car lanes into transit, sustainable freight routes, and cooling trees? Do New Yorkers want it? Let’s find out.
“So it’s a road.”
Yes.
“It’s loud and ugly and smelly and it hurts my throat.”
Yes.
“Will it be better afterward?”
Not unless we change course.
McLaughlin is co-founder of Off-Ramp NYC, an organization that advocates for the removal of urban highways and the reclamation of public land, public health, and public coffers.