N.Y. Requires Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Reconstruction

 

To this very day, N.Y.'s "leaders" wallow in circles over what to do about the B.Q.E.?

 

The B.Q.E. was originally built during the 1940s.  Its recent project to replace its Kosciusko Bridge upped capacity from 6 to almost 10 lanes.  Yet nothing has yet been done to reconstruct anything to the south.  Nothing about the overloaded segment from the Long Island Expressway to the Williamsburg Bridge.  And only discussion about its two other segments to the south, namely the portion with the other bridge into Manhattan connections (that includes the architecturally magnificent triple deck cantilever.), and its southernmost segment known as the Gowanus Expressway.

 

In 1997, the once highly respectable Regional Plan Association spotlights the idea of a Gowanus Expressway Tunnel, to replace its  viaduct - with tunnel- seen as cut and cover flanking the existing expressway viaduct,, so featured at a panel at their April 1997 one day conference.

Simultaneously, an architect announce the idea of what is now called the Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel: a straight line tunnel to depart and reconnect with the BQE.  This would create a perpetual benefit of a significant time savings for through traffic not destined to the bridges to Manhattan.  And it would siphon such traffic to allow re-striping from 3 to 2 through lanes per direction through the cantilever.

 

NYSDOT subsequently issued a study of  the Gowanus Expressway Tunnel, presenting a variety of route options, though without the straight line tunnel.

https://www.dot.ny.gov/regional-offices/region11/projects/project-repository/gowanus/index.html

https://www.dot.ny.gov/regional-offices/region11/projects/project-repository/gowanus/tun_alt.html

 

THB
Harbor / Bulkhead

TB
Bulkhead

T1
First Avenue 

 

 

 

T2
Second Avenue 

 

 

 T12
First and Second Avenues 

 

The Gowanus Expressway study has been supplemented with a study about its connecting BQE segment north.  

 

The Cross Downtown Brooklyn (CDB) Tunnel would supplement the existing B.Q.E., which is retained as a collector distributor system, and re-striped from 3 to 2 lanes per direction. 

 

It is the sole tunnel option that adheres to the concept of the shortest link being a straight line.  Nonetheless, this subsequent study report includes it with other alternative tunnel routes, all of which are considerably lengthier (more expensive) while not providing the time savings advantage.

 

 

 

 The tunnel route alternatives so studied are:

1. T-1 running under downtown Brooklyn by Henry Street
2. W-1, a variation of T-1 also running under downtown Brooklyn but further west by Hicks Street
3. T-2 following the existing BQE corridor alignment
4. T-3 outboard tunnel following an alignment similar to the existing BQE but further west and into the river.
5. W-2 straight line tunnel between Exit 24 of the BQE (by Prospect Expressway) and Exit 30 of the BQE to the East of Washington Avenue
6. W-3 outboard tunnel between Sunset Park and Exit 33 (only qualitative study based on length)
7. W-4, a variation of W-2 between Exits 24 and 30 that extends further south than Prospect Street where it joins a Gowanus tunnel alternative that follows the bulkhead.

 

W2 straight line tunnel to the northern end of the existing Gowanus Viaduct, and W4, a variant of W2 extending further south to a Gowanus Tunnel along the bulkhead.

 

 

W2 and W4 are to be moled tunnels via TBMs, as they must to the north to pass fully beneath the street grid.

The study enumerates several variants of TBM highway tunnels, with either 2 or 3 travel lanes per roadways with 2 foot left and 4 foot right shoulders:

 

1) Single 66 foot diameter, stacked 3 lane roadways

2) Duel 55 foot diameter, single 3 lane roadways

3) Duel 42 foot diameter single 2 lane roadways

4) Single 54 foot diameter, stacked 2 lane roadways

 

These TBM tunnels are shown with 2 foot left and 4 foot right shoulders.  This is akin to the recently constructed Seattle Route 99 Highway Tunnel.

As a heavily used interstate highway, and as all new construction, should this several mile long I-278 Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel be so narrow with its lack of sufficient shoulder space?  Imagine the traffic and situations of stalled vehicles in need of service or a tow, and consider the servicemen.  Would we want that with a meagerly 4 foot right shoulder?  Or 6 or 8 feet?

At a minimum, lets provide full 12 foot wide right shoulders.

 

The authorities prefer a single tunnel bore with stacked, 2 level roadways, as more economic.  With the available 57 foot diameter TBMs as used in Seattle Route 99, this gives too little in safe shoulder space, and hence a somewhat larger bore less, but less than 66 feet..

 

With the matter of potential EV battery-pack fires, particularly larger vehicles as trucks, we should go with the costlier option of TWO tunnel bores, to avoid stacking one direction atop another.  With the already available 57 foot diameter TBMs, duel tunnel bores would each have a sufficiently wide roadway of a pair of travel lanes with a 12 foot right, and 6 foot left shoulders.

 

So far, instead of any outcry to provide adequate shoulders, we get the typical post 1963 cacaphony of budget conservatives insisting upon deflecting for the early 1980s elimination of the NYSE stock transfer tax (from a modest 0.1% to effectively 0% with NY Governor Hugh Carey's 1978 legislation to institute a "rebate" (refund) of that tax revenue.  That highways are evil.  That we must view them with disdain and hostility, and hence, that we must remain ignominiously on the matters pertaining to their DESIGN.

 

We are told to de-map the urban expressways. and change them into surface streets, screw everyone.  Eliminate a grade separated road outright, and fail to even consider the variables of where the traffic would instead, including even the measurable impacts of heavy streams of vehicular traffic.  Sure an urban expressway is going to centralize vehicular emissions due to the volumes.  But is it better to leave everything as is, or to somehow convert an expressway to a boulevard with traffic lights, or is it to modernize and enclose that traffic stream within a new urban expressway tunnel equipped with pollution filtration technologies?

 

So far the plan has not yet been set.

 

Its physical realities are that it must be constructed together to the south with the Gowanus Expressway Tunnel, as well as to the north to cut and cover reconstruction of the BQE trench segment alongside and south of the ramps with the Williamsburg Bridge.

 

Other factors to be determined include what to do about the BQE trench, as well as its elevated segment.