Replace BQE With More of What Makes NYC Great

Who says it’s hard to find development sites in New York City?

Some opportunities are hiding in plain sight, such as the office conversions and replacements unlocked by tax break 467m and rezoning.

But old offices are not the only thing that could be swapped out for housing and other development. Old highways are another candidate.

Consider the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Replacing it with avenues and light rail from the Verrazzano Bridge to LaGuardia Airport sounds fantastic but is not as crazy as it seems.

As a real estate play, it makes sense. Property values along the route would soar, generating tax revenue.

The impetus for action is that part of the complex roadway — the triple cantilever in Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo — is falling apart, but after eight years of debate about what to do, no consensus has emerged. The rest of the BQE is also deteriorating and needs constant, costly repair.

This will cost tens of billions of dollars, and we will gain nothing. Better to replace the expressway with something else.

I know what you’re thinking: “Impossible. Where would all those cars and trucks go?” Even Bjarke Ingels’ elegant plan to replace the triple cantilever involves building a six-lane “capped highway.”

But highway removal projects have never generated the traffic nightmares that naysayers predicted. Find me one that did. Surely no New Yorkers miss the West Side Elevated Highway. But they love Hudson River Park.

Replacing the BQE, pitched in the Daily News by Off-Ramp NYC co-founder Cindy McLaughlin, would cost 30 percent as much as rebuilding the aging interstate.

Even that expense would eventually be offset by the increased tax revenue that removing the viaduct and trench and reactivating the surrounding blocks would generate.

Off-Ramp NYC’s website goes into more detail, noting that the project would unlock over 100 acres of land — the size of Soho. Think of all the housing and commercial development that would spring up.

The idea is not entirely new. Back in the 1990s, Sunset Park community groups pitched a tunnel under the harbor to allow for demolition of the Gowanus Expressway portion of the road.

Sunset Park would have returned to life, but the outlay for a tunnel would have been enormous. In those days, it was always assumed that traffic volume on the viaduct, or any demolished road, would have to be maintained somehow. We now know from various examples that that’s not true.

Don’t believe me? Google “San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway and Central Freeway,” “Harbor Drive Freeway Portland” or “Park East Freeway Milwaukee.” For good measure (and a spelling challenge), check out the linear park that replaced Cheonggyecheon Expressway in Seoul.

Besides, as McLaughlin notes, any time you tunnel under or deck over something in New York City, the cost is astronomical.

That’s why building 12,000 affordable homes above Sunnyside Yard, for which Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked $21 billion from President Donald Trump, is a flawed concept. It’s why nothing has been built over the rail yard at Pacific Park. The most economical option is always at-grade.

I have no illusions that bureaucrats and elected officials can think outside the box on something like the BQE. But if they did, developers would step in to create more of what makes New York City great. Which is not highways.