Sheridan Expressway Opponents Screwed Up

 

 

An organized campaign to supposedly tear down the Sheridan Expressway promoted a great lie.

 

They were hardly going to tear down anything- to tear down referring to something already standing up- namely the unsightly spiteful elevated portion of the Sheridan and its continuation as the elevated Bruckner.

 

NONE of their plans would tear that down.

 

The only thing they accomplished was converting the Sheridan's northern segment, which runs along the surface to a boulevard, meaning adding traffic lights to an expressway.

 

Such activism's centrally directed narrative falls apart from a look at the topography of the area of this Sheridan boulevard, along the surface with a hill sloping up to the west- ideal for constructing a deck over the surface Sheridan. Such a deck would be the way to extend the street grid from the west eastwards to the lower Bronx River waterfront, to best connect existing neighborhoods to that waterfront.

 

But such activism always seems to work instead for those seeking waterfront areas that are more as enclaves, such as Battery Park City with its circuitous street layout temperate from the inland street grid.  Sort of explains much of the opposition to Westway (which would have instead extended the street grid), making new development more as an extension of an existing neighborhood), why Westway opponent Marcy Benstock favored Battery Park City, and while such activism in the Mott Haven area of the Bronx to the south of Yankee Stadium, favors keeping the divisive elevated 6 lane Deegan expressway hemmed in with new urban waterfront enclave development.   What the Deegan instead needs is an underground replacement with needed extra capacity and full shoulders, which is build able in stages by using the adjacent lightly developed commercial properties for constructing a box tunnel, transferring the traffic, demolishing the existing Deegan and there building the second direction tunnelway.  But the greedy sobs at the top just want to erect luxury enclave development instead, keeping the elevated highway as a barrier to keep out others.

 

Such a policy to fail to explore innovative cut and cover designs of out obsolete design expressways means keeping the awful Brucker-Sheridan viaduct, and as well expending it with new elevated ramps into Hunts Point, further overshadowing the lower Bronx River.

 

If activists were actually looking at the situation themselves, instead of following a script likely devised at Fordhan University School of Urban Planning, they would have already drawn up plans for replacing the elevated Bruckner-Sheridan with a tunnel, including a tunneled (rather than elevated) link into Hunts Point, and build at least an underground connection with the Bronx River Parkway.  Remove and replace the Sheridan-Bruckner viaduct with expressway tunnel, cover over the railroad, and facilitate new buildings alongside.  Alas, activists allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of contentment with a false and misleading narrative that accomplished really nothing.