Why The I-278 Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in NEW YORK is FALLING APART And They Can't Fix It
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มิ.ย. 2024
- The BQE in New York City is a major thoroughfare that is falling apart. New York is struggling to find a solution to fix it but time is running out. On this video we look at the issues with the roadway and why it's so difficult to fix.
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10 Rules of Driving in New York City:
• 10 Rules I Learned Dri...
Why the Cross Bronx Expressway is So Congested:
• 10 Rules I Learned Dri...
Brooklyn Queens Expressway Drive:
• I-278 East - Brooklyn-...
I-278 Westbound Across New York City:
• I-278 West - New York ...
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Sources and additional info:
Curbed NY Article:
ny.curbed.com/2019/3/12/18248...
The Stoop Design
brooklyneagle.com/articles/20...
BQE Crumbling:
www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/ny...
BQE Information:
www.bqe-i278.com/en/about
Other Potential BQE Designs:
www.brownstoner.com/brooklyn-...
Time Stamps:
Intro: 0:00
What is the BQE and Why it's so Congested: 1:45
What Fixes have been Proposed: 6:49
Thoughts and Predictions: 11:23
Conclusion: 13:09
As someone who grew up in New York, people often have to be forced to do something here so unfortunately the collapse scenario appears to be what will be necessary to trigger the city to rebuild it.
Would be disaster case scenario if they just replace it. That shit doesn't make sense and needs to be deleted.
Needs to be demolished and replaced with train lines, not another expressway.
@@oceanthresher6184 makes no sense because that would make so much more traffic on the streets and many of these neighborhoods between don’t have trains to begin with and they won’t and it could take 30 years to create new underground lines , my neighborhood doesn’t have a train but atleast I have a highway close , many places in queens don’t have subway
@@oceanthresher6184 There is or maybe I should say was a plan for a waterfront light rail line between Sunset Park in Brooklyn and Long Island City/Astoria in Queens. I think the original plan was to run it along Furman Street (serving Brooklyn Bridge Park) which runs underneath this section of the BQE. They later decided to change the alignment to serve the Borough Hall area via Atlantic Avenue and possibly Court Street. They thought this would be a better alignment since it would’ve allowed the line to connect with several subway lines at Borough Hall.
I love nyc but knew I wasn't crazy! Been here 8 years and yes it's astounding to see that kind of mindset in real time
I used to drive the BQE in the 1970s. I was taking night classes, and during the bad old 1970s, riding the subway that late at night was scary. I got to meet some "interesting" people on the subway, but I was always glad to get home in one piece. Yes, even at 11 pm, the BQE was a bottleneck.
I'm almost 50, and lived next to the BQE/I-278 all through my childhood. Crews have been repairing this road my entire life. I have never not seen it under construction or repair.
2 seasons in Chicago:
Winter & construction.
A few years ago during the peak of rush hour on a Friday evening, a contractor's assistant decided to perform an experiment and get out of the van and walk along the side of the expressway from downtown Brooklyn to the Kosciuszko bridge, a nearly 3 mile distance. The assistant not only walked there faster, but had to wait nearly 45 minutes for the van to catch up to them! There are viable solutions to this repair but politics will continue to intervene until there is no choice but to undergo it. Perhaps it will see a solution beforehand.
😂, well not really, I thought about that scenario many times over 30 years ago, when I last lived in the metro NY area.
Even in the 70s and 80s that expressway was a parking lot.
It’s going to take a Presidential order, just like when Obama ordered the TZ to be taken down. You’ll see, it’s going to happen.
The BQE has a special place in my memory. My father decided to let me drive on the BQE as an introduction to expressway driving. It was a white knuckle ride but I survived.
As someone that grew up in Queens, this video hits the nail on the head. Just steer clear of the BQE if you can!!
As someone who lives in queens and has no subway in his neighborhood , it’s still very useful for us the forgotten nyers who won’t have a subway anytime soon here , let us atleast have the option to sit in traffic then take side roads that will taken even longer if the bqe didn’t exist , imagine all the trucks that would congest side streets even more
@@redforman2999
A good 1 or 2 subway line directly connecting Brooklyn and Queens is long overdue. And no, the G doesn't count
@@redforman2999 I grew up in one of those Queens neighborhoods too. It was either take a 25 minute bus ride, just to get to a subway or get in the car and drive.
278 through staten island is a parking lot during daylight.
Actually the new six-lanes Goethals Bridge actually makes that section of I-278 drivable IMO. Before that...
The 405 Freeway out in LA: "hold my beer" 😂
As a fellow staten islander I can't tell you how much it fucking sucks tryna get around this island during the day
@@XxMidnightToker420xX I am sure it is awful. My point is that I-278 there these days is great compared to the rest of it.
I drive from Atlantic City to Brooklyn on the regular... and always laugh because we consider SI to be "halfway there", as there are times that Outerbridge to Brooklyn takes almost as long as AC to Outerbridge.
That said, the work they have done to the SIE and Goethals has been a big improvement... now redo the West Side Expressway to 6 lanes and Outerbridge. Oh, and finish the War Vets to connect to the SIE. ;-) Or better yet, get working on that flood barrier/highway going from Sandy Hook to Breezy Point, so freight can bypass most of the whole NYC mess.
It forever blows my mind how many sections of highways (anywhere, not just the ones shown in this video) don’t have a shoulder/breakdown lane. I can’t think of a worse situation to break down in than that type of area.
Almost the entirety of the NYC metro area does not have shoulders. They were all built before the interstate highway system was even though of.
These roads were built before we even knew how helpful a shoulder was.
@@rpvitiellonot true. The majority of NYC’s highways do have shoulders. It’s just that there’s specific areas that don’t.
Well, look at it this way... There is no breakdown lane... until someone breaks down. Then there is a breakdown lane and one less travel lane.
During much of the day, traffic moves so slow that being broken down in a travel lane isn't as dangerous as it would be on an actual highway moving at the speed limit.
I've come across broken down cars on the BQE during peak traffic, and it's remarkable how smooth the locals can be about squeezing past it without much of a delay added to the bumper to bumper crawl.
some may have had shoulders when they were built like 2 lanes and a shoulder, then the shoulder got turned in to another lane.
BQE used to be terrible at the old Kosciuszko bridge crossing between Brooklyn and Queens before it got replaced by 2 newer cable stayed bridge. Traffic still backs up at the bridge so I guess the old bridge wasn't as big a bottleneck as it was made to be. The cantilevered section at Brooklyn Heights is a whole another animal. I ended up spending an hour stuck there one time after the lane reduction.
Anytime you have some lanes merging, you are going to get some delays... but 4 lanes in either direction is lightyears ahead of the old 3 narrow lanes in either direction.
In the early 90s when I first started making occasional trips over the bridge, it was a parking lot... all day long... miles before you got to the bridge... when you were on the bridge, you got lots of time to look at the holes in the bridge that you could see through to the water below. I can't believe the old bridge didn't self demolish well before 2017.
The traffic builds up on Kosciuszko as a result of the lane reductions on the cantilevered section and Brooklyn bridge.
I heard them blow the old bridge. Me and my girl used to walk over the new bridge all the time.
Most of the delay now is from the exit ramp on the west bound side down to Meeker Ave. The exit lane gets backed up and people decide to merge in late to skip the wait and slow down one or two more lanes of thru traffic.
There are multiple bottlenecks on the BQE especially on the west bound side. Meeker Ave, Metropolitan Ave and Wythe Ave exits backs up because of the traffic light right at the end of the exit and the cycle is notoriously short to let any meaningful number of cars pass. The lane reduction wouldn’t ideally be an issue as the lane reduces to 2 at Tillary St but the heavy merge of traffic getting on the BQE west from Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges chokes off that section.
The reduction from 3 lanes to 2 a couple of years ago has had a permanent effect of making that section of the BQE permanently slow. Before that, it was possible to sometimes zip through the BQE during off hours. Now that is never possible.
And since there is no good alternative for trucks, this will have to be addressed somehow. I'd hate to wait for a collapse because it may take longer than people expect and the quality of life has seriously degraded.
I used to visit the Bronx from lower Brooklyn each weekend, and the alternative would be to pay a toll and use the Battery Tunnel to go into Manhattan and take the FDR drive into the Bronx. But for many people that's a burdensome extra expense.
By subway, that trip takes close to 2 hours, so if I couldn't drive, I wouldn't have gone. On the best of days that trip would take about 45 minutes with light traffic, and those days are gone.
As a Philly suburbanite, my favorite alternative route to I-95/278 through NYC is taking US 202 up to I 287 in Somerville NJ. There’s a lot of relatively speedy bypasses in that corridor even if it’s not traffic light free, and on a bad day for NYC it can even bee the faster option. It’s admittedly not practical for every trip since I 287 mostly bypasses the city, but when it’s practical it’s a lot more pleasant to drive than the turnpike. Besides, New Hope-Lambertville is a lovely detour through two very beautiful towns.
I dont understand why they dont upgrade us 206 to i 287 in some divided highway or freeway status it can be useful to get around the neglected area there and also be helpful to get to montreal
@@timbo303official9 because that would essentially provide a free alternative to the turnpike (I 295 to US 1 in Trenton to US 206 in Princeton) and upset people in Princeton. this was essentially the plan for the Somerset freeway before new jersey scrapped it.
the US 22 corridor where there would be an interchange is also quite developed so i can’t see people being happier about that.
Going through NYC is not a short cut. It makes no sense to into NYC unless you are trying to get to NYC or to Nassau or Suffolk County (where you really don't have miuch of a choice).
@@timbo303official9 Funny you mention that. Part of the influence as to why there's a somewhat random Tim Horton's on the Somerville Circle is due to the number of Canadians that pass through the area lol. Also, there was supposed to be a highway that did that, the Somerset Freeway, which would've brought i-95 from Pennington to 287 somewhere around exit 10, but it was cancelled due to NIMBYs. As a result, 206 from Somerville to 295 has been s-l-o-w-l-y upgraded and bypassed in spots. It took 40 years for the 206 bypass in Hillsborough to finally finish and open, and now the second widening phase has been delayed an additional 2 years back to 2026 for completion because the state had to fire the contractor last month. It's a mess.
When I visit family in both CT and NJ, that 287 is a lifesaver, when I had to go from Norwalk CT to Freehold, NJ.
Remembered years ago when it’s northernmost point in NJ was not much past I-80.
Also, the Garden State Parkway would backup all the time, even though it was the more direct route.
Thanks to the history of Moses vs locals, NYC has all its messed up highways. About this one section, I have also heard of a plan for a tunnel under the neighborhood to replace the decks.
And it was the locals that messed up those highways. The Bushwick Expressway and Cross Brooklyn Expressway could've brought a lot of relief to both the BQE and Belt Parkway. But everyone rejected them and accused Robert Moses of building highways for racism. Now you see the result. It's the same in all the boroughs and the suburbs.
@@DTD110865 I partly agree but some things Moses and government did made no sense at all.
I could find and show a map of his plans for Staten Island some of it kinda made sense but some parts did not.
For example, he wanted highways on every shore, some of the people who would have had to move were not just non-white, there were a lot fo whites who would have to move too. The planned but never built routes that would have followed the North and South shores were actually redundant given other routes that still exist or were planned.
The city also had plans that Moses had nothing to do with such as a connector between an existing highway and one Moses had planned, the routes were very close at this point and there was no need for the connector, it made no sense.
@@DTD110865shut up
The thing people have to remember about NYC is that it's big, dense, geographically diverse, and really really old. Getting *anything* done is hard. Not to mention it also gets punishing winters. I'm not surprised that they've struggled to find a solution to their highway problems. If you ask me, a good place to start would be requiring all thru traffic going from the Mid Atlantic to New England and vice versa to use I-287.
europe would like a word
New York taxes and spends but can't fix its infrastructure. Look at the state of the MTA, it's a disaster.
That’s all BS excuses. Places like London despite being older or Montreal despite worse weather can all build infrastructure cheaper, faster, and better than NYC. This highway realistically should be 12 lanes wide like the NJ turnpike, as the ONLY interstates highway in the area. By all means build it all under a park so you don’t see it, but the population keeps going up and they want to make the only real highway even smaller.
@@rpvitiello Of course 12 would really be 20 since the Feds will insist on a breakdown lane on each side of each of 4 roadways.
@@rpvitiello do you know what ancient cities like London and Paris don’t have running through the heart of them? Freeways. Because they weren’t stupid enough to carve their cities up just for the sake of people owning cars. A 12 lane interstate through the heart of any major city let alone New York is a ludicrous proposition. It’s a total non-starter, and the idea that there’s just endless amounts of money for the city and state to do whatever they want is equally ludicrous. NYSDOT has to spread what meager budget they get from Albany over the entire state, and NYCDOT has to do the same with all of the city, and let’s not forget the city controls all four of the major bridges crossing the East River which coincidentally also happen to be the oldest bridges in use. Major transit projects like this are always ridiculously expensive, just look at the Big Dig in Boston.
If you wanna propose a 12 lane interstate to the people of NYC by all means be my guess. I’ll be there to watch you get laughed out of the room.
The BQE has always been a mess. The section underneath the promenade literally bounces with the traffic.
Fascinating. One of the unspoken problems is that NYC is far older than most other cities with big expressway systems, and it's just not feasible to retrofit a multi-lane system into our 350-year-old city.
Houston's population in 1950 was 600K; LA in 1950 was 2M. Both cities had vast undeveloped spaces, unlike NYC, so it was much easier to build expressway systems there.
Finally a video that talks about the crappy BQE in NYC. All these years there was nothing on the media about the BQE, absolutely none. Thank you for this video. Entrance to the "wall" towards Manhattan is the hell. Multiple lanes and entrances merge into two lanes. No solution no nothing.
My take away from this is: the BQE will unfortunately eventually collapse
Someone will have to die before it gets fixed and maybe not even then. That’s how things work now.
That is the nature of politics. Catastrophic events have to happen to get anything done.
The Knicks will win a Championship before the NYS DOT fixes 278.
Im a Knicks fan and it hurt to say that but its true
8:49 People need to stop saying that critical interstate infrastructure should be replaced with bike and walking friendly boulevards that always have sunshine and rainbows. Because the real world doesn't work like that.
And like you said if it wasn't critical to the economy of the city, like the Embarcadero Freeway or the West Side Highway, it wouldn't be a problem. However, ideas like this and a similar one when it comes to discussing the traffic of I-35 in Austin, it's just a terrible idea through and through. We. Need. Roads.
There is no easy solution but I'd have to say more than likely they are gonna wait until it collapses before anything is done to correct it hopefully nobody is hurt or killed if there is a catastrophic event
Yeah unfortunately that’s what I think will happen.
Same thought.
Same thought but I have a suspicion that a dangerous cargo will be triggered by the collapse when it happens ☹️
I’m in New York and this is exactly what will happen. Nothing will be done until it collapses or it’s structurally unsafe completely.
with how busy it is, there will be multiple fatalities.
As a child I remember my father driving on BQE and seeing it under construction and now as a adult almost in My 40s that highway is still a disaster...I always avoided the BQE like a plague 😂 your explanation and analysis is dead on
I live on Long Island. People forget that there are almost 3 million of us that are stuck using this congested and crumbling infrastructure when we want to leave and have goods delivered. Cuomo was supposed to build a bridge / tunnel to the Connecticut (instead of ferries). I welcomed that. Bridge / tunnel from William Floyd Parkway to I-95/91 would be the most logical at this long.
They tried that before but the wealthy fat cats in Connecticut blocked it
The construction of a bridge across the Long Island Sound, especially connecting NY 135 to Interstate 287, would result in negative environmental impacts in the areas around its approaches. The area is extremely environmentally sensitive.
@@SigmaRho2922 I’m pretty sure everywhere is “extremely environmentally sensitive” and any construction project would have negative consequences, but we need to consider trade-offs too. This isn’t stopping the Fehmarnbelt from being built between Germany and Denmark. Although that does include rail in it along with road.
@@SigmaRho2922 I’m not asking for a bridge to I-287, I’m asking for a bridge and/or tunnel combination similar to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from William Floyd Parkway to I-91 / I-95. I think that would make more sense. More of Long Island is further east than when these proposals were done 40+ years ago.
@@billm47645We would need to include an electrified 25 kV AC rail line on that bridge too. It would not be designated as interstate 91 but would be called interstate 295. The old interstate 295 would become part of interstate 80 and interstate 495 would become interstate 380 with 495 being retained as a concurrent state route.
My daughter graduated from NYU in 2022, so I am happy to say that I will never again have to visit the hell-hole that is New York City. I always laugh when I see films and TV shows made in NYC, because they never show the giant mounds of trash bags, which are omnipresent throughout Manhattan. Trash removal expenses must be a huge component of production costs for anybody filming in NYC. It boggles the mind that people will pay $4,000 for a tiny one-bedroom unit, when there is a constant pile of stinky trash bags right outside your door. This is all part of the overburdened infrastructure system. With all streets and highways functioning at full capacity, the city is already overwhelmed. How can they ever close a major highway for a few years for repairs or upgrades?
The movie producers put the trash back where it was.
The BQE is an important artery to NYC - however, I would support the idea of commercial only traffic during certain hours. Perhaps even make it tolled for private vehicles.
I would say make it like the NJ turnpike with separate car and truck lanes, and only allow commercial vehicles in the truck lanes so it doesn’t encourage even more car traffic.
The problem with making it a toll road, is New Yorkers try and take surface street to avoid tolls, which is worse. I would say you want to have congestion pricing on surface streets and make the underground highway the free or cheaper option.
Or make 278 commercial vehicles only at all times and make all private vehicles go around the long way by the Belt Pkwy, the Laurelton, and the Cross Island Pkwy.
Better yet to remove it but this would definitely be the runner up proposal.
@@rpvitiello this is the truth.
@@jameskennedy7093 I think it is needed, just replace it all with a tunnel except where it may need to pop up for ramps, and demolish the old structure.
As a kid, my parents crossed the GWB on trips to Westchester County so I wanted an alternate and just looking at a map I was dumb enough to think that I-278 may be a good option. At least that moment makes me glad that I have clinched it.
Thank you for accurately describing and showing the disaster that is the BQE. My poor sister has to commute on this road every weekday.
The view of Manhattan from the old Kosciusko Bridge was always inspiring.
At the start of the video the differences between the interstate and the parkway system were briefly mentioned, and the deficiencies of the parkway system were brought up. The reason for this is very interesting. Basically the interstate and the parkways were designed for 2 completely different purposes.
The interstate was a postwar creation designed to be a utilitarian system to move both freight and passenger traffic from point a to point b as efficiently as possible. On the other hand, the parkways were created in the 1920’s and designed specifically to move pleasure motorist on day trips from the crowded city to what was then rural areas for recreation. Infact; The very term parkway has 2 meanings linked to this intended use.
Firstly, all these roads were designed to terminate at state parks, which was the intended destination of the traffic. Secondly, the roads themselves were said to be designed as an extension of the park and were therefore built for slower leisure driving, incorporating many turns, lush green medians, and other features intended to beautify the road rather than make it as efficient as possible.
As the postwar years saw massive suburban expansion into these formerly rural areas, and the parkway’s usage changed from pleasure driving to utilitarian driving, these features meant to beautify the roadway became a hindrance to its new usage. There have been some projects undertaken to widen lanes and eliminate curves on these highways, but there is only so much that can be done for roads that were designed for a completely different purpose.
Mileage Mike, if you have not already done a video on New York’s parkways, please consider it as a future topic as it would make a fantastic series.
the belt and southern state meander way too much
Given various political, hardcore environmental, and most likely certain immediate neighborhood concerns, I reckon upgrading to full expressway standard may be surprisingly unpopular… even though it’s a VERY badly kept secret that commercial traffic within NYC needs more corridors.
But hopefully retrofitting/milling certain sections of Parkway multiple feet lower to eventually be worthy of allowing box trucks (but not 18 wheelers), on top of completely redoing the ramps (while keeping the original bridges until they’re structurally too old) inbetween.
@@rickyricardo69 Several of the parkways in the NYC area were literally the first limited access roads ever built in the United States. I want to say the Bronx river Parkway was the second one built ever in the 1920's. Most of these highways were built at grade and follow the general topography of the land, which is why they meander. They simply didn't have the resources or the machinery or the will to straighten them out.
Mid 20th century population growth was really a mistake that ruined so many nice things
I get that BQE may be a critical route for freight. So dedicate it to freight only. Get rid of the private automobiles clogging up the limited lanes.
Do you how congested that would make Brooklyn streets?
@@rchot84 No more so than tearing down the Embarcadero made San Francisco streets.
Freight only would never work with the self entitled people in cars.
@@MichaelSalo Not true. The streets surrounding the Embarcadero were under capacity, so the surface streets were able to absorb the traffic. The congestion on the freeway simply ended up on the ground streets. Please stop spreading lies.
Anti highway people always ignore that these freeway teardowns are ocurring in depopulating cities
Yo, loved this video, I am born and raised in New York but been living in texas for the last 30 years, the video bought back alot of good memories been on all those roads over and over. Thanks for the video
I drove the BQE every day for about 10 years when I owned a retail store in Manhattan. In that situation, it's not really tenable to take public transit because I'd often be bringing shipments or supplies in to the store myself, and even on days I wasn't, I couldn't risk being made late because of some random delay on the LIRR (BQE delays were more or less predictable; LIRR delays were not). I didn't drive on the promenade section of the road but the one thing you didn't mention was the Kosciuszko Bridge, which used to be a major backup every single day. They replaced that with an all-new bridge a few years ago and it more or less fixed that problem. It was generally smooth in both directions after that. Andrew Cuomo pushed that through. I don't see any of the current leaders of the city or state being able to do the same with the Brooklyn Heights promenade section. They just don't have the same gumption.
The BQE is the worst, there’s always really bad traffic on there, plus it’s in absolutely horrible condition. Cross Bronx Expressway, Belt Parkway, and Cross Island Parkway are bad too, always heavy traffic on those. Excellent video as always!
Very impressive analysis....especially after a first visit to the area!...
Great video MIke
as a former NY'er (a quarter of a century) you talking up NYC got a chuckle out of me. Even now that I could afford to live there I woulsnt go back
I have memories of driving on the BQE when I last lived in NYC some 45 years ago, and visited there up to 15 years ago. Traffic then was heavy, but acceptable, actual speeds often got up to 50 mph (the speed limit) or a bit higher in places. (Never drove the BQE in rush hour). Slow spots were the access ramps to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and the exchange with the Gowanus expressway and the Brooklyn Battery tunnel. It's taken a while for things to get this bad.
all i do is sit in traffic on this highway and then this video comes up on my homepage to remind me of the time ive lost on the forsaken bqe. and i watched it because what's 15 more minutes. great video mileage mike !
your point about brooklyn bridge park: i never considered that space couldve been used as a temporary roadway to offset traffic while they actually fixed the highway. That particular stretch of park where it wouldve/couldve happened is now actually just big mounds of grass. Probably related to flooding or something, but it's unusable by the public in the first place. Widening furman street would have been the answer.
Very well made video!
Excellent video!!!! A+++++.
As a Brooklyn native who had the displeasure of driving on the BQE my entire adult life I think that they should level it and rebuild it
The main challenge for the traffic is the constant switching from 2 lane, to 3 lane, then back to 2 lane then back to 3 lane again (on the northbound section). If they just kept it as a 2-lane road all the way through the dangerous section, it would keep the traffic flowing.
Good point. Random lane drops definitely choke up traffic flow.
I thought about the same. However, if you look at the layout, after 92nd st exit, northbound (To Queens) starts with 2 Lanes section by section, at 7ave BR, then at the Highpoint (Gowanus) (2 lanes to Tunnnel and two lanes turn to wall section. It's hard to start flowing traffic into two lanes.....
@@taktsoi9548 I was thinking from the place where it splits to the tunnel, it stays 2 lanes from there all the way through to the Brooklyn Bridge. It doesn't need to be 2 lane before that, and the traffic is less awful on a regular basis there too.
Another excellent video.
I love your voice so calming ❤️
Great vid..i take the bqe home everyday ..williamsburg bridge to bqe..to grandcentral pkwy....lower manhattan to northern queens...on mondays 40min...fridays a easy hour and a half commute
Drove thru it since the person I was staying with lived in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and we were returning from Flushing... Subway is still fundamentally a hub-and-spoke system (the G line doesn't extend far enough in its current alignment)
Nice to see the Belt Parking lot get some love.
As a native, I-278 Exit 31 to Williamsburg St W & Flushing Av is always backed up. Even when I’m on the school bus it’s backed up. I recommend skip exit 31 and go to exit 29.
I-78 was planned to routed beyond the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens and end at JFK Airport by Robert Moses, but this was scrapped due to local opposistion.
Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX) and Bushwick Expressway I-78 East to Jfk Idlewild Airport.
As I recall, wasn't the original plan to have I-78 literally go through some lower floors of buildings? I can still see the drawings with skyscrapers rising above travel lanes. I know there's no will and no money, and even if there was, the lawsuits and red tape would tie it up until NYC sinks into the Hudson and the East River, but the only thing that would work would be a Big Dig project that would route traffic from New Jersey under Manhattan and then branch it off into Brooklyn and then another branch towards Queens. And those branches can't be anywhere near the BQE.
Good! That would have cut lower manhattan, chinatown and the lower east side completely off from the rest of Manhattan! For what? Suburbanites from NJ to catch cheap international flights out of JFK? I think most people living along that planned route would have moved away if completed and killed the city.
I remember traveling on the BQE back in the day when I was visiting family in Connecticut from Toronto. It was the return trip; traveling through the main bus terminal in NYC and heading northwards back into Canada. The POTHOLES, omg. The three layer portion was pretty cool though, coming from a Canadian.
The algorithm led me to this video. And having grown up in the BX now living in Jersey. Def gon give these a watch. 78 is gross but gives you some of the best views of Manhattan from both Jersey and Brooklyn
Commercial goods in Europe are also transported mostly by roads (trains are mostly used to transport bulk materials) and somehow Europe doesn't need highways through cities.
there are tons of highways going through cities in Europe too
Being British and watching this I'll never complain about our motorway network again
We drive on a parkway and park on a driveway.
As a lifelong New Yorker and someone that drives on the BQE and Van Wyck every single day I can safely say that the Van Wyck is a million times worse than the BQE when it comes to traffic. The ratio is correct.
Hopefully they can do something about interstate 278 in NYC
I managed to "volunteer" to drive a 26' moving van to our Brooklyn branch from North Carolina.
I came into the BQE on a Friday morning....it took me an hour to move less than 5 miles.
Looking at your video I get flashbacks. Still in NYC but I don’t travel it everyday but 43 of it is enough!
You came to New York to see infrastructure? I love your channel already
As someone who first saw the derelict West Side Express Highway after it had collapsed and keeping up with the City and the State's plans to replace it and finally settling on a surface artery, I know what's going to happen. Action will be delayed by environmental reviews, constant public meetings, and even NIMBYs tying things up in court, that the cantilever structure will collapse and then there will be endless squabbles on what to do about it, and finally the City will settle for a surface artery, again.
This means 278 will be severed, and will have to be renumbered as two odd-prefix x95 routes.
278 is a critical artery for local freight traffic in the area and would have to be rebuilt as a tunnel under the interior of the borough.
It's almost as though it's a city built more for people than cars and that it's working perfectly fine in that regard 🤔
Pretty fucked they're just letting the road collapse though. Just shut it down and turn it into something useful like another transit line, walkable park, bike path, etc.
Great video. As a former New Yorker from Long Island, I have driven on the BQE on a few occasions (thankfully). Last June I was up in New York on vacation, and made the mistake of going to the BQE (Huge traffic that day getting off the Verrazzano Bridge to the Belt Parkway, which was also jammed. I finally gave up, and got off at Atlantic Avenue and took it to Pennsylvania Avenue to the Jackie Robinson Parkway (formerly the Interboro Parkway) to the Grand Central Parkway.
Jackie Robinson was an even dumber idea
@@jeremiahtaylor1817 Actually, the Jackie Robinson was moving, and I made good time to the Grand Central.
My girlfriend didn't read the title so during your introduction, she was going, "BQE! BQE! BQE!" I use it a lot to go to her place from New Jersey where it meet Prospect Expressway. Hate BQE and Staten Island Expressway, which I'd say has the worst drivers. Love your videos.
You've discussed Cross Bx and the BQE, now you got to enjoy the Van Wyck Expressway that has had daily construction on it since 1979
Love your work!! Please find out why the Manhattan bridge has been under some kind of construction constantly for the minimum of the last 10 years. 😂
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s are used to take the BQE as opposed to the Belt Parkway because at the time it seemed to me to be a more direct route coming from the northern state parkway to get to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge heading south towards Virginia but of course, it was three lanes each direction
Love the BKE, growing up my dad always said it was driving on "hard mode" and that's the truth.
Around the late 80's when I got my drivers license to the mid 90's after 11 pm during the week the Cross Bronx was a cemetery hardly no traffic around. The same with The BQE,East River Drive, LIE. In 25 minutes from GWB to Brooklyn bridge. Now traffic is like that 24 hours a day.
I love the bqe, traffic can be terrible, no shoulder for disabled vehicles in many of the high usage sections, but still the best driving experience I've ever had was driving on the BQE at 5:30am on a weekend as the sun came up with almost no traffic (one of the only times I've driven it without traffic).
I have been driving on 278 and GWB in one day and it's quite the patience test.
When driving under the Brooklyn Bridge access road it was always just two lanes. So it was three lanes like a normal road but then reduced to two as if a tractor trailer was broken down in one. The Atlantic Ave, exit is five miles from the Long Island Expressway, I would allow at least 45 minutes to make that trip, it often took an hour. I would get up at 4:30 to beat the traffic, leave a sleepy neighborhood in Carroll Gardens and jump onto the BQE. It was like being dropped into the middle of the pack at the Indianapolis 500. All kinds of trucks cars tractor trailers booming down the road as if they were escaping a nuclear bomb. The BQE is New York City, people are in hurry.
Welp I know what is on my bucket list... go thru that road.
Im a civil engineer for traffic planning and road construction and my opinion on american highways is:
If there was a better education in driving and behaving in a car, many many traffic and congestion problems would be fixed instantly.
Nobody is talking about that quiet obvious point. If you have good rules and people who can follow the rules, highways dont start to congest with 40, 50% of their capacity in use.
With bad/missing rules and bad drivers, you can even kill the traffic flow on empty roads!
That's an excellent point. I've seen so many roadways where traffic is worse than it needs to be because of the way that people drive. Left lane hogs might be the worst of them all. In Houston on the Katy Freeway I often notice people seeing all those open lanes as an opportunity to drive slow in the far left most lanes and slow down everyone else.
True. UK Drivers have smaller lanes and fewer shoulders yet still drive in a better manner than most American drivers.
Drove this to go to a Mets game yesterday. It took 2 hours to go 11 miles. Unbelievable!
Can you do a video on all of the NYC bridges and tunnels sometime? I’d be very interested to know more about them.
That's actually something of a big ask. Lot of bridges/tunnels and a lot of info to cover. I'm sure Mileage Mike is up to it, if he chooses.
I used to work for a restaurant with an outpost in the Rockaways. I would have to drive to the restaurant via the BQE, pick up food, and drive to the outpost via the Belt Parkway. It was brutal.
The BQE is definitely the worst interstate in NYC, but not the worst highway. That honor goes to the FDR, which was appropriately named after our least mobile president.
Nope, the worst within NYC is still the Jackie Robinson / Interboro Parkway with its s- curves and 25 MPH speed limit et al.😢
@@r.g.8977 I’ve only been down the Jackie Robinson a couple of times but yeah, it wasn’t fun. I’m going to stick with the FDR being the worst because it once took me over 2 hours to get from one end to the other at 11PM on a weekend. I nearly pooped my damn pants.
BQE definitely the worst. Cross Bronx #2. I rank the Grand Central worse than the Interboro. I'd say the many of the Interboro's problem are because of the GCP. My fav: The Henry Hudson.
@@bigbrother8285 Taking the Hudson north from the GW was always a pleasant drive. Taking it south and getting dumped onto the West Side Highway, not so much.
The ground level boulevard in place of an old elevated highway in a large city recalls the long-ongoing debate about what to do with Toronto's Gardiner Expressway...
Also New York looking at Boston's Big Dig probably discourages them from burying the BQE. If the Subway connected to the Staten island Railroad, it might make the 4 lanes passible but it probably would only move people who use a shuttle connection to the higher capacity train that might not be any more frequent that the service as is
The light rail line in NJ that literally stops at the entrance to the Bayonne bridge, a bridge designed to carry rail, should be extended into Staten Island. The fact that wasn’t done as part of the massive construction on the Bayonne bridge is pure Idiocracy.
Can’t anyways because the subways are right there
SI has about 475k population. It won't help cause biggest traffic from SI is not people with vehicles, it's trucks and food cargos coming from NJ and going to Long Island or Manhattan. Basically SI is just bypass. Train will be cool but wont help
The BQE! A nightmare trying to head back to Boston on a Sunday
I grew up in queens and regularly take the BQE. The traffic is truly horrific
Simply Big Dig the BQE. Make everybody happy!
Have not lived in the NY metro since 1992. Used to sit in traffic as a young kid on the BQE. My father used the BELT instead, but that got backed up too, and that was in the 70s and early 80s. I can only imagine how bad it is now, sans most of 2020.
278 started in western Staten Island and it was no worse than central NJ traffic in the mid to late 80s when I drove it. It got horrible upon approaching the Verrazano toll, and thereafter.
when these roads were built, the trucks were smaller, there was less people, and the drivers were different. i have driven the bqe many , many times and thought to my self that in a alternate universe they had forethought and started the new york accessibility program to improve roads etc.
Mike, I (from Raleigh) was up in BK for a wedding, driving around with my parents to bring a bunch of stuff to a hotel for the whole wedding party, and the BQE was terrible. It would've been faster to WALK, forget a scooter, but that wasn't an option unfortunately. You could see problems form in real time that would dissipate in seconds in less densely populated cities, but in NYC a problem created by one person's momentary anti-social behavior can rapidly scale up to the point that it affects thousands of people. On the way into the city on one of the Hackensack bridges it took about 30 minutes to go half a mile; when we got to the point of congestion, it was just a light rear end collision, but the lady with a BBL (which was itself probably a cause of rubbernecking as she stood around talking on the phone) didn't bother to move her BMW into the shoulder.
I saw that on the CBX, a two car accident slowed down traffic to a crawl because they were right in the middle of the road instead of on the shoulder. How do they manage to get away with this? Literally anywhere else I've been, signs are posted to move vehicles to the shoulder if they aren't disabled. If you ask me, not moving vehicles to breakdown lanes when possible should be grounds for a license suspension, at the very least paying considerable premiums.
So was the bbl more natural, or more ridiculous?
Grew up in Brooklyn and now live in Queens, so I know that road and the area that’s falling apart very well. Mother still lives in Brooklyn so to visit mom the BQE is the best of all the not so good ways. Interconnectivity between Brooklyn and Queens has been terrible for years. And with traffic explosion it is unbearable. Lucky that to get to mom I get off the BQE way before the tiered section, but if that area wasn’t such a shit show I would be faster to shoot over that and jump on the prospect park expressway. So New York and Brooklyn officials please get it together. Thank you for visiting my Ted Talk.
Uhhhhhh pretty troubling to compare "what about LA? What about Houston and Dallas?" Those cities all have horrifying traffic and disastrous approaches to managing it. All of those cities involve far more sprawl, far more surface area than NY, but less transit and fewer options for non-car use and so have even worse scenarios for commuting or moving at all. Those are the exact places you DON'T want to replicate. Turning NYC into Houston is... frankly just a kind of insane thing to say.
That wasn't the point of mentioning them. The point was to highlight that those cities have massive road networks to move a significantly smaller population to show the scale of how large NYC is in comparison in turn leading to the heavy use of its highways. Geographically speaking there's no possibility for NYC to replicate those places so no one was suggesting that. Despite the transit, NYC sprawls quite a bit too. Development doesn't stop when you leave the NYC city limits.
From the perspective of commuters, yes. From the perspective of commercial trucks, emergency vehicles, military, and Transit drivers that are kind of forced to use it, Mike is spot on.
I do agree with you about public transit in North America - it's inadequate in most modern US cities, and where it is adequate, rider security is almost always a problem - but we can have better public transit and still have properly maintained and well-designed high-speed roads. Public and private transportation do not have to be at odds.
NY sucks tho
Remove entirely, dig a 4 lane truck route tunnel, put a cap and a boulevard on top, add some BRT on top, car drivers don't need every little tantrum served
So I know the 'official' name is now the "Hugh L Carey Tunnel" but it will never be anything other than the Battery tunnel (or Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel) to locals. NY had an epidemic of renaming crossings in the past decade-plus. Similarly the 59th St / Queensboro Bridge is never seriously called the "Ed Koch Bridge" and the calling the Triboro the "RFK Bridge" is only catching on a bit.
The only name change that was good was Verrazano to Verrazzano
An obvious temporary (though minimal) measure would be to allow truck traffic on the Belt between the Verrazzano and Bay Parkway. But I can imagine the howling that would ensue if that were proposed!
The problem is many trucks won’t even fit on that road without major construction. If they do major construction to fit trucks, I don’t see it being temporary. (Though to be honest the belt being converted to interstate makes a hell off a lot more sense that the current truck route to Long Island or Kennedy airport.
There’s clearance issues
The overhead bridges are all too low
@@edwardmiessner6502 Good point. The good thing about that short stretch, though, is that there's only one auto overpass and one foot bridge. Both could probably be raised easily. But then I guess there'd be the problem of trucks not exiting
That would require the Belt Parkway to be built to interstate standards which would be just as if not more expensive than fixing the BQE
Recentl, a painful reminder occured on I 95 in Philadelphia with a fuel truck fire causing a collapse of an overpass in NE Philadelphia. The highway is shutdown in both direction for a significant distance and creating a traffic nightmare on 95 for local and transcity commuting. This is going to to create a similar situation if the BQE is allowed to continue to disintegrate at the currant pace. Bite the bullet and get it fixed or replaced.
I worked for the DOT for a short time in Brooklyn. I had to use the BQE and Gowanus daily. One day, while working at the Hamilton Ave asphalt plant. The 'big' boss told me that the City has plans to dig up 4th Ave and put a thru tunnel under it. Then, they would rebuild 4th Ave for local traffic and tear down the Gowanus permanently. Drivers would be given a choice. Take the tunnel straight through Bklyn or take 4th Ave local streets. Since that was 20 years ago. I guess that plan is out the window. Lol
Mike totally gets it! He doesn’t even live here and he already knows how the politics involved will make this an almost impossible fix. I use this highway almost every weekend and it’s still full of traffic at 9am😭, but like he said the most likely scenario is that nothing will get done because of budget arguments and politics… and this will either collapse or something extreme would have to happen for NYC to actually rebuild this correctly
I used to ride this with my Dad countless times growing up. This is sad to see, but proves again that Man doesn't have the answers.
To fix BQE you need to alleviate east/west north/south arterial road issues...
Linden Blvd NY-27 needs to converted into an arterial highway that connects Prospect expressway with the Interboro Parkway. As well allowing local truck deliveries (Commercial plates) on the Belt/SSP/NSP. This allows all freight coming in from New Jersey Ports/JFK to directly feed into upper/middle/lower Long Island. Along with entirety of Flatbush being converted into a parkway for local deliveries.
I would love to see how the BQE compares to the DVP in toronto
Used to drive the BQE at all times of day, even at 2-3AM there was traffic 😂
I ride on I 278 in all Broughs and assess the congestion is ridiculous, mainly in Brooklyn(BQE) and also in the Bronx(Bruckner Expressway south)
Trucks like dump trailers that haul stone and sand… cement tankers (that haul powdered cement to concrete plants) utilize NYC’s overweight permit which allow them to gross 120,000 as long as they’re not crossing a major bridge. These heavy haul rigs are identified by their 3 or 4 axle trailers
The NYC bypass traffic is going to have to reroute to I-287 and Garden State Parkway in NJ, which are already strained by heavy traffic due to commuters.
I totally agree. I lived in SanFran, by far, NYC has the worst traffic!!
I miss many things about living in the New York area, traffic is not one of them. The BQE has been a nightmare for years. I remember the Belt Parkway in gridlock at 10:00 PM on Sunday night. Yes, the good old days. It's funny when the people in the Mountain States complain about traffic.
I use this roadway every Friday afternoon to visit my best friend. He is the ONLY man I would ever sit in that mess for!