New York's Most Hated Highway is Falling Apart
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- Опубликовано: 6 дек 2022
- The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is crumbling.
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NYC is one of many cities with ageing infrastructure that really needs to be upgraded before it becomes a serious problem. I've always been a fan of road tunnels, though they are slow and expensive, and I like that proposal here. I would prefer more encouragement of public transport and cycling, but I'll take what i can get.
Aging
Investing tons of money in car infrastructure? No!
Just removing the street without a replacement is cheaper and as good for pedestrians as a tunnel replacement
In Germany we have all of that in cities. In the Netherlands even more so
Would love to see you do a video on Elon's ideas for traffic tunnels
@@jan-lukas you're saving on the construction but essentially nuking all the local businesses reliant on trucking for delivery from orbit and increasing traffic volumes on local streets. nice plan smartass
As a SimCity engineer I am shocked and appalled at the state of this infrastructure
🤣🤣🤣
😭😭😂😂😂
As someone who owns a copy of Cities Skylines and occasionally plays it, I am seriously disappointed that no one has sought my advice about this complex and difficult problem.
😂😂😊
As a Tropico (google it) dictator I say let it rot.
NYC has many sketchy stretches of highways, but the cantilevered portion of the BQE is on a different level all together.😖
Nice pun. I mean it's on 3 different levels altogether really....
omg stop it you two
If you think the BQE is bad, you haven’t been on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.
at the time, it was something like, state-of-the-art, innovative civil engineering (1950's), but now it became a smoggy, dank, rusty, and a noisy entity that stands out so much few loved it, and many residents hated it.
(idk whether if Triple Cantilever is actually like that tbh)
@@AllMustJump - You think the CBE is bad? try the Birmingham Spaghetti Junction
As a European, I drove in NYC for the first time last year. Drove along the FDR Dr. around Manhattan and on to the Brooklyn Bridge to get across. I was surprised by how all the infrastructure appears to be crumbling down, it's old, rusty and dirty, lots of potholes, no road marks etc.
As a city that claims to be the greatest city in the world we are terribly poor potholes don't get fixed infrastructure is left to rot and rust until and accident happens or a piece if debris fall onto the road only then do they take action to fix something. They just invested 10's of millions of dollars to repair two bridges that go over the staten island expressway over on bradley Ave by gannon ave and that's only after 2 separate incidents happened were large chunks of debris fell on to the expressway one of which happened during rush hour traffic. The bridge is a tiny little thing just to get cars over the expressway and it will only be completed by 2024. They work on it for like 2-3 hours a day in the mornings and that's it. Currently traffic only goes one way on the bridge instead of two ways trucks arnt allowed yet they drive over the bridge constantly anyways. And the detours cause even more traffic. It's a fucking nightmare tryna drive around this city sometimes the traffic alone is ridiculous during rush hour I can probably ride a bike faster to my destination then driving a car. The staten island expressway needs to be atleast 6 lanes wide in both directions and even then I'm sure there will still be traffic even with a HOV lane it does nothing to drain the flow of traffic between the people coming from jersey and Brooklyn the expressway becomes a parking lot everyday and there's nothing to be done about it. But we can spend all the money to put speed cameras on every corner and red light cameras at every intersection. They have even gone as far as put speed cameras at exits on the expressway so godforbid you enter the exit at highway speeds and you haven't reduced your speed to a crawl by the time your passing the exit sign your fucked. And to put the cherry on top they have reduced all local street speed limits from 35 to 25mph. 25MPH!!!! It's a fucking joke your driving on roads that in jersey are 45-40mph but not in new york here you have to drive like a fucking turtle to get anywhere and godforbid you go 11mph over the speed limit you'll see a lovely flash in your rear view mirror after your get caught by 1 of the 20,000 speed cameras they have set up. They don't even have cops sitting around clocking anyone because the cameras will just get you. And if it was the daytime and you didn't notice the flash your in for a lovely surprise a week or 2 later when you get a nice photograph of yourself in the mail for 50 fucking dollars. Get more then 400 dollars worth without paying and they'll boot your car in the middle of the night then you have to pay the 400 dollars plus the 200 dollar fee for the boot removal and then you have to return to your local gas station like some delivery boy. I'm telling you these motherfuckers have got it all figured out how to suck every dollar out of you. But we still can't repair the millions if potholes the plague the city to the point where I only use my daily driver and can't even take my nice car out because I'll get a flat or a dented rim just from driving down the block. Honestly don't know why I still live in this city fucking expensive but at the same time we have the infrastructure of a third world country and even then I'm sure a third world country has better roads then we do.
@@XxMidnightToker420xX jesus.... please please learn to format your posts and use paragraphs. I cant even read this because it look like a giant block of text.
@@ML-yn9yu I am sorry for your inability to read.
@@XxMidnightToker420xX Yea I have seen the cameras right off exits, it is even better now since they have the cameras work 24/7. 🙃
Nobody wants to read that
Born and raised NYC, I don’t even want to think about how much of my life I spent sitting in traffic on the BQE. Honestly might be years. The cantilever section in Brooklyn been reduced to 2 lanes from 3 because it’s simply falling apart.
I thought AOC was elected to fix shit there.
@@KB-ke3fiaoc is fixing her bank account.
@@KB-ke3fi That's not her district
As a Dutch urban designer, i can hardly believe what im looking at. A TRIPLE Cantelever? And support pillars eroded to the point of 0:36!? WHAT? It's a miracle no part of it has collapsed yet.
Some of Americas infrastructure is shocking compared to Europe. Highways crumbling there.
They need more public transit insted of more new highways
In defence of America, it's a very big country - to bring their roads up to modern standards would cost at least two aircraft carriers and they need those to defeat Canada.
As they say "Only in NYC".
@Johnny Wednesday Funny comment, but an Aircraft carriers costs $5-10 billion. Repairing all the roads in the US has an estimated cost of $100-500 billion. So even using the most exspensive aircraft carrier we would have to trade atleast 10-50... I feel like Europeans forget just how freaking big America is.
I lived next to the BQE for two years and I can attest that it is the worst feature of Brooklyn. The noise and vibration is audible for miles around. I don't miss being woken up by trucks engine-braking at 3:00 in the morning. A glass of water in my apartment was never not jiggling.
The idea of someone living in NYC and complaining about a highway is hilarious.
@@penskepc2374 fr tho, for me i cant imagine living in the urban section of my city, pittsburgh, which is ridiculously smaller then NYC
The idea of living in NYC and NOT complaining about the traffic noise from BQE, is ridiculous
@@Hungry_Box ok, that makes sense, but once you get to the point of trying to get a major thoroughfare torn down without a replacement you should seek therapy
Pittsburgh > NYC it’s not even remotely the same
When I worked in the film industry many of the jobs I was on required me to do runs through the BQE, usually multiple times a day. The absolute hatred I have for this expressway is impossible to put into words hahaha
Yes, especially when most of the vehicles don't take the Hugh Carey tunnel and creates a bottleneck continuing onto the BQE.
I despise driving 🚗 Through NYC. I seem to get lost every time with a GPS. Absolute garbage city
After moving to NYC a couple months ago I would be surprised if we don't see some major collapse (like the Manhattan bridge) or one of the elevated train lines in the next decade
Imagine a time of about 2 years when many people worked from home and didn't need to use these roads for a while, this would be the perfect time during which to restore or replace all this!
That would have been too much like right
@@TdotFunk they didn't plan it and a strong government always should plan ahead 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
They would have to accelerate the whole process and they did not have the funds allocated for it at the time
People are not the problem! The highway was designed to handle vehicles and light trucks not over weight semi trucks. They should have implemented weight stations, if possible restrict most truck deliveries between the hours of 4 to 6am during the summer and fall months (Weather). Allowing only those larger semi that must deliver to do so during business hours. Or charge these larger heavier trucks a dollar a day to used this highway based on delivery routes to that area. This highway on average has 129,000 commuters 15% of that traffic is trucks, that $19,350 a day $7,062,750 annually! Let the ones who are destroying the highway pay to fix it!
@@kkrobertson1 and in turn they charge consumers more
"Yes a report from 2016"
I don't know what's more surprising, 2016 being considered urgent or 2016 being _that_ long ago
They had 4 years to plan and could have executed new construction or completed repairs during the pandemic.
If the construction of new buildings didn't seize then road work could have been completed as well.
The BQE is one of my favorites as a motorcycle driver. Simple. Direct. To the point. The roads aren't in the worst shape compared the death trap that is Belt or Van Wick.
huh belt was actually repaired a lot recently
Goddam Van Wick has nothing on the Cumberland hwy ;)
I grew up in a house on the Promenade and drove on NYC roads, daily on the BQE, for years. Returning to NYC a few weeks ago I was amazed at how bad all of the roads were, not just the BQE.
Having lived most of my life in Brooklyn and now Staten Island I can honestly say that every major highway from New Jersey to queens is in need of replacing. None of these roads were designed to carry the amount of truck and vehicle traffic they now handle. As for the section of the BQE highlighted here I can pretty much safely say if it is not totally replaced and soon there’s gonna be a disaster of proportions never seen before.
I don't get why they are allocating so much community consultation time when it seems so hazardous. People pushing that should be held responsible.
Agreed. But it’s all about making people “feel” good about whatever the proposal ends up being. Hey, they’ll be a world class waterfront park but meanwhile the new road carries half the traffic of the old and everyone has to drive through the neighborhoods at 2mph. No, they need road experts that can build a world-class road to handle the throughput of NYC and let the chips fall where they may.
Agree. Eliminating the rail system that brought food into Hunts Point in Bronx was the most inefficient idea in the 20th century. "Yeah... let's use thousands of gas guzzling, polluting, traffic creating and road destroying trucks instead".
@@tylermacconnell217 Its not about making people feel good. It's about the value of the property that is adjacent. Property that was mostly low income when they built the BQE has now gotten gentrified in a lot of areas.
You're right but none as much as the bqe portion of the 278
Kicking the important things down the road...so often what humans do to the detriment of safety and good economics...
Thank you, Fred and B1M.
Reminds me of the "ALASKAN WAY VIACUCT" located off the Shore of Downtown Seattle, that was "falling apart/sinking" and nobody (including state/city) wanted to repair...
So, 3 years ago, the entire 3 mile stretch was torn down!
San Francisco, too.
Who knew that trying to cram as many automobiles as possible into areas designed to be human-scale would come back to bite us in the rear?
Trucks*
@@LongIslandCityLayout it’s trucks it’s cars and any all single person auto motives
@@stevenlitvintchouk3131 Who said anything about mass transit being a "substitute" for the road network? Do European countries not have commercial truck drivers or roads? 🤔
When people have other ways to get around, it decongests the roadways for the people who actually need them (such as truck drivers.) Coming from someone who personally spends hundreds of hours per year sitting in Atlanta traffic, ANY moves to relieve pressure from these roadways would be highly appreciated by millions of people, ESPECIALLY our commercial truck drivers.
@@driley4381if there was only a system designed to move freight from city to city without using roads. Just wonder what it might be called. Oh that’s right it’s called a train. The highways weren’t designed to handle all this traffic and nothing destroys highways faster then having 80,000lb vehicles driving on it.
IMO the first problem is cramming too many people into one area at the same time in the first place. Im not just making excuses for more roads but even the walkable urban areas have rush hour traffic jams just of people instead of cars. Even when most people are using transit the transit then just becomes congested. Rush hour itself needs to be somehow eliminated which remote work is kind of doing for a few people but all the jobs that need to be done in person should be dispersed around the city instead of all downtown and start times could be varied by just 5 minutes to try and not have everyone leaving home at near the exact same time.
Myself I cant live in any city the way they are now. The whole style and pace of life there gives me extreme claustrophobia. Everyone in a city is affected by the whims of the millions of random people around them whether they are aware of it or not and so day to day life is too unpredictable.
I remember on my first visit to NYC seeing the cantilever section. I took the train to the city so I did not arrive by car and simply stumbled across it while exploring the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. It is both impressive and terrifying at the same time.
Great view. Got to see the twin towers
Driving it is also sketch as hell
I studied during my St. Francis college breaks there sitting on the promenades. It's a beautiful spot.
Great vid! Voice is good to listen to, and good, story-telling footage (Even if the edits are a bit harsh, and too frequent, in places) ...
Roads are one of my interests.
I live by the BQE and hate it. Such an eyesore and noisemaker. It seems like it’s infeasible to tear it down, but I love the idea of submerging the BK Heights section and connecting the promenade to the park. More walking and biking = better, safer, more beautiful, quieter city experience.
And more gang activity in a new park.
The walks and the bikes are not keeping this city alive. The focus of this video is how important this one highway is to the city. And you’re talking about “beautiful parks” …….
Jeez… I didn’t think that these comments above me could be any more ignorant on how cities actually work.
@@GeorgeSargashian any utility a highway provides to a major urban area can be provided orders of magnitude more efficiently and with fewer negative externalities by rail and easy pedestrian + cycle access to said rail, no exceptions. Maintaining an intraurban highway is just deliberately kneecapping your own economic growth and quality of life for no reason.
@@GeorgeSargashian he said submerge the d@mn thing, not get rid of it and dump it in NY Harbor. He meant build a tunnel to replace it, like Boston's Central Artery & Third Harbor Tunnel. The triple cantilever stays open until the tunnel is ready for traffic. Then switch the roadways over. Easy as pie but expensive as hell!
Realistically, nothing will get done until something goes wrong.
very true🤣🤣
You just know the costs of the inevitable lawsuits are being factored into the budget of whatever replaces the BQE.
Sounds like a common theme
Yep
And then everyone will be shocked 😳 completely predictable
The cantilever portion is even worse now that they have changed it to two lanes instead of three. It's always bumper to bumper. Most people going Eastbound usually exit at Hamilton avenue to avoid all that crappy traffic that just keeps getting worse.
epoxy coated rebar has been banned by many dot's because it actually corrodes much faster than uncoated. the problem is little nicks in the coating become nucleation points where the rebar corrodes super fast. galvanized rebar may be the answer since zinc is much tougher coating and is actually self healing where it gets nicked.
An idea for a future video: The Zuidasdok project in Amsterdam. Burying a very busy highway to expand a train station to create an international station and lengthen a subway line. All in the finacial district in Amsterdam.
And it works amazingly well
The Lelylijn is also a nice Dutch topic, lot's of design studies have already been done, so lot's of video material if you get your hands on it.
Are you a ducthy that is cheering on the destruction of family farms to make the United Nations slavery city? All done under the guise of climate activism against cow farts.
Or the double deck highway tunnel through the city of Maastricht in The Netherlands.
Does Netherlands have high speed rail 🚅🚝?
As a New Yorker, I have to agree, the BQE is hated
You can't just be against freeways to keep up with the trends either. I love freeways more than anyone here, if they are designed well and don't serve as bottlenecks.
@@shanekeenaNYC exactly
@@akivaplutno Just walking so the next Robert Moses can run.
😂
but also crucial. Even some of the minor changes these people are recommending like removing on-ramps to the bridge (Brooklyn Bridge) will massively shift the flow of traffic into the abysmally knotted and congested downtown brooklyn area. 🤪 I fear that some of these urban planners while admirable in their pursuits, lack critical knowledge of the traffic in Brooklyn. I live in that area and use the BQE fairly regularly, everyone agrees it needs to be rebuilt, but everyone also knows that limiting its usefulness for vehicles will only push those vehicles into our neighborhoods.
I actually drove on the cantilevered section for the first time in my life this year. I usually go North (or, as it is maddeningly called, East) from the bridges, but accidentally went the other way. Getting turned around was a serious hassle.
Fascinating!
Would love to see you do one on the Cross Bronx Expressway!
That's bad too...but at least it's straighter and a bit wider.
This section of the BQE has fascinated me since I was a kid, and then when you learn the story of Robert Moses and how he cut up neighborhoods, it’s an intriguing story.
Yeaahhh the second I saw that the neighbourhood got divided up I was like "I bet that was a job for a very big pair of racist scissors"
@@vice.nor.virtue You know most of these neighborhoods got cut up before blacks move in there...
My mother was a secretary working for the NY State DOT back in the 1990's. She wasn't an engineer, but she had to write up and edit all kinds of reports for the engineers, and she used to talk about all the different plans for this particular stretch of road. That was all 30 years ago. A lot of work has been done on the approach to the BQE, up to the Battery Tunnel (which, technically, is the Gowanus Expressway, which connects the Belt Parkway & Verazzano Bridge to the BQE) and most of the elevated section of that roadway has been rebuilt, taking at least 20 years. My impression is that they can tear down and build a new roadway faster than they can repair the old one. It would be more painful and inconvenient in the short run, but probably would end up with a cheaper and better built highway.
Exactly what I thought. I think with most very old things, such as buildings and infrastructure, it's probably better to build it back better than to continue renovating things and just building on the existing structure (buildings, such as shopping centers with multiple parking decks and malls). I don't think we realize how aged or out of current standards everything is because of the renovations or "fixes" on a structure (most of which are probably cosmetic, to make it look pretty and new).
I bring up especially shopping malls and centers with tiered parking because we have one here that was around since 1959 and the upper decks still leak into the street level/basement parking, it's like it's raining indoors while it's raining outside (heavily). They just keep building new stuff on it rather than focusing on the elephant in the room the water ingress into the upper parking deck, sealing is just a band aid solution until the main structure gets addressed, while it has good bones, those bones might also be deteriorating. (bones = concrete rebars)
Well they pretty much are, Brooklyn bridge park will be absorbing that section and the cars will be sent underground, they are favoring the Rich
No Its a dense city. Most ppl could use public transport & bikes instead, if they are doing deliveries or disabled there are small roads..
@Platypus Paws naaaa I like my car.. I'd rather sit in traffic than take public transport
I agree about tearing it down and building a new one, similar to when they built the new bridge over at the old Kosciusko bridge. The new bridge was built extremely quickly. It took it less than 4 to 5 years because they left the older bridge open while they constructed the newer one.
Thanks Robert Moses!
One of the things I found fascinating, when I worked at a building on it, was that 42nd street is repaved *every year*
Driving along that triple cantilever is an amazing experience. Some of the best views of the skyline, and I enjoy the twists and turns that get you above and below other bridges and roadways.
Yeah. So very sharing of a common space.
It is pretty scenic.
Shouldn't you be focusing on driving not the view?
Wouldn't it be great if you could stop & enjoy it rather than driving straight thru?
That’s the thing, the BQE needs help no doubt but it is quite dramatic and beautiful driving north… and trust me I am not fan of Robert Moses……..
Long Island which includes Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Sulfolk counties and 6 million population are served by only a small amount of expressway lanes that trucks can use to supply that population. The BQE is one of the main supply routes. I drove tractor trailer trucks in the NYC metro area and all the expressways are running at maximum 24 hrs.
I’m the guy that increasingly wonders if the badly lacking number of reliable trucking corridors between Long Island/NYC & literally the rest of the mainland USA noticeably affects the price of literally everything down to bare essentials at the grocery stores throughout NYC & Long Island compared to Jersey, Connecticut & the Mid-Hudson.
And I wouldn’t exactly call I-95 or I-278 in general reliable. I reckon I-87/Major Deegan isn’t too severe compared to other routes; same with I-295/Clearview or I-678/Van Wyck, but one still has to use the most troublesome routes to get to said routes…
@@schwenda3727 and I'm the guy wondering why all those trucks are not replaced by some sort of train...
@@AmauryJacquot This is America not Europe
@@zerohero5753 the US could start thinking ahead, instead of just doing the same stupid thing over and over again...
@@AmauryJacquot the US literally has the largest freight train system in the world.
Count on B1M to give you the straight and unsensationalized version a very important story! TY ...
I drive a truck on this road everyday m-Friday closing some ramps would help traffic immensely! Hopefully they get it back to three lanes sooner then expected.
cheers to the B1M for sharing s uch an important local issue!
You're welcome!
That triple cantilever section is crazy!! The engineering for that in the 50s/60s is astounding to me.
It's crazy to think this was designed and built in the 1950s. Back before computers, simulations, and without the last 70 years of advances in building materials. And it was designed to support a fraction of the load it has received over the decades - the BQE has taken an absolute beating, and it's still standing 70 years later! Truly amazing.
I had decades of traveling from points south to visit family in Eastern Long Island. Occasionally I used the BQE, but it was much less nerve racking to go out by JFK, using Southern States parkway, and then cut across up to the North Shore. Just driving in normal circumstances on the BQE was more stress than I needed.
VERY HELPFULL
The tunnel plan has already been studied and deemed unfeasible due to some very large utilities that run under the site that would be extremely difficult and expensive to relocate. There was a very reasonable rebuilding plan that was shot down by wealthy bklyn heights because it temporarily routed traffic through the promenade during construction for a few years. Whatever is finally done will now cost at least 3 to5x more and still route traffic through the heights as there aren't any other options. NIMBY wins again.
I mean NIMBY had defeated Robert Moses nearly 100 years ago the city would not have this problem to begin with ;)
i travel on this portion of the BQE frequently and the proposal you mentioned about rerouting the traffic on the promenade was created years ago. the repairs of the BQE, if they moved ahead at that time, could already have been COMPLETED, but as you said, the rich shot it down and now the BQE section is worse than ever and even more years away from being repaired. hopefully it doesn't collapse before then.
@@filanfyretracker Moses was a disaster for New York, all about cars, nothing else. He destroyed many, many neighborhoods out of sheer arrogance. More NIMBYism forcing introspection and creativity on Moses' part would have avoided some of the decisions that ruined many parts of that city.
I think the government should just tell the rich to take a holiday and ignore their voices…but they pad the government worker pockets.
If it isn’t fixed before collapsing, then the rich should be the ones held accountable
And the working taxpayer loses again.
The park with the tunneled highway looks awesome!
New York infrastructure is just crazy but also very fascinating!😮
It’s retarded what u talking about. It’s catering to the wrong crowd. The structure will still be horrible. Just another patch job
Hello imoeratur. Thanks for giving me ideas for builds
The aerial shot at 8:26 is not the BQE. It is Route 280 in Newark.
this video is fantastic.
The Brooklyn Promenade is a great place for a leisurely walk, but like many other waterfront parts in NYC (South Street Seaport, Little Island and other places along the Hudson and West Side Highway), the noise from the highway is annoying to say the least. There are loads of human activity around the area, and more space for people/bikes would definitely invite more people to get out and better enjoy the area.
The highway in South Street seaport is elevated so it's not noisy at all (at least if you're visiting, idk about living right there). Maybe an eye sore at the most, but it at least provides shade/shelter from rain.
I don’t recall you mentioning it, but the Kosciusko Bridge (which was recently re-done) has been a godsend in improving traffic on the BQE. So it seems like they’re at least improving some of it.
Edit: I know the focus was on the triple cantilever part of the road but I just wanted to make an example since the bridge is city-maintained as well
@@MrMikeh21 which means the Brooklyn-Queens might take itself out! 😨😱
I don't know how old you are but I listened to WABC radio in the early 60s and heard 'Fearless Freddie Feldman" the helicopter traffic guy call it the Kos-Kee-Oskow bridge. I thought that was how it was pronounced but it's not.
Named after a polish war hero who fought for the USA!
@@PD-we8vf Along with Casimir Pulaski.
@@lawrencelewis2592 my parents honestly thought that that was how it was pronounced for the longest time!
I love your channel, and i would love if you were to do some videos about new construction in Tokyo. There are some very large and interesting projects
Thanks bro I'm watching this channel from horn of Africa/ Somalia 🇸🇴 🇸🇴
Finally a practical approach to the BQE. It can not be underestimated how valuable the greenspace to the Brooklyn residences...
I'm concerned that it'll be (roughly) another Big Dig.
@@sonicboy678 That was bored tunnels rather than "cut and cover" which are as simple as placing conrete tubes and covering them with dirt.
Downtown Brooklyn is super depressing. So much concrete, so many large streets filled with cars.
@sonicboy678 maybe it's just me but it seems that the big dig; albeit expensive and having taken longer than it should is a great addition to Boston removing traffic going to BOS airport and surrounding areas from the surface level and submerging them. And British thought has a great point in regard to the construction method.
@@sonicboy678 Exactly. Because when the taxpayers foot the bill there's no such thing as a "budget" or a "deadline".
I used to drive from my home in Connecticut to NYC and would take this road and it always terrified me. See both NYC and Connecticut roads are always in a constant state of repair. You should talk about the Merritt Parkway a disaster of a highway lol
I remember when they repaved it mid 2000’s, spent years dealing with that nightmare
SF did something similar when replacing Doyle drive with the presidio parkway. Tunnels that allow for uninterrupted green space above and traffic partially covered for a good portion of the roadway.
I grew up in NYC, in the early 60's, until the mid 80's, when I moved to the UK. Even back when I was growing up in the 70's, the BQE was a potholed mess. I can only imagine how dilapidated it is now, over 30 years later.
You don't want to know. You were so smart to leave like I did
Lived and worked in Brooklyn Heights for twenty years and I’ve seen the BQE falling apart. I’ve seen and heard all the plans to repair/ fix/ replace it, and all I can say is. I’m glad I’ve retired and moved. I cannot imagine what the traffic on the streets like Clinton, Atlantic and the others will be.
Good luck to my former neighbor and friends.
Where'd you go?
I used to drive a tractor trailer down to Atlantic several times a week. The traffic was bad then, can't imagine what it would be like with diversions lol. Because of the way that the cantilever was constructed, 13'6" trucks can't use the right lane as is, gonna be a mess when they divert the entire thing.
thanks we’ll f-in need it. I hope i’m in the burbs and out of the area before that mess starts.
Liberals think the answer is parks and burying highways and of course removal so they can make the city even more expensive gotta love these assholes.
@@4149stonepony So... you want to live and work in a dystopian city with all concrete, and where over half of all the space in the city is for storing or moving cars?
You'd rather have sky scrapers of parking lots (or apartment/office buildings where half the height is a parking lot) than more apartments, which would ultimately make apartments more expensive as there'll be less of them. Sounds smart.
I drive on the BQE everyday.
Its always congested now after they took away a lane around the Brooklyn Promenade stretch of the hwy.
It went from 3 lanes down to 2. The idea was, it would ease the weight and congestion. So there’s 2 lanes now and a very wide right shoulder.
This is NY, the shoulder is always used as another “driving lane”
I live right next to the brooklyn promenade. The view looks amazing, but I didn't know it was all this problematic. I'm glad they're going to be fixing it, just hope it's not noisy at night haha
As a long time fan of this channel and a recent fanatic of Cities Skylines, this video is fantastic.
That game man, just discovered it myself.
Ye so much fun and gets very addicting especially with a few of the DLCs and mods
If you haven't discovered them already, you guys might enjoy the channels of Strictoaster, Fluxtrance, and Akruas. Sadly, of those three only the last one is still active, but the other two have done great stuff in the past and have been a great source of inspiration for my own cities.
@@lonestarr1490 city planner plays and biffa are also very good and still active
NYC is playing the same way I do... Highway in the way? Bury it!
As a truck driver of 20+yrs, I've traveled the bqe several times in the past and yes, the the drive is always...an experience. Most roads in new england are very old and are not equipped to handle the traffic of the present but the bqe is the worst of the worst. My days of driving in nyc are over but definitely unforgettable. I hope Mr. Adams and the new your dot takes the infrastructure of the roadways seriously and fix them.
New England? Thats not a state, so they have no roads, each state handles its own roads. Learn geography and try finding new England on a map.
@@Thebrothaisback hush
the rest of us appreciate your non-sharing. Thanks!
NY government officials using tax payers money for what it is intended?
Never gunna happen.
@@Thebrothaisback 😂😂😂😂 there ya go. Gave you the attention your looking for. Moving on.....
As a New Jersey driver I find easier to use gwb to rfk to get to Brooklyn. Don’t go past prospect expressway coming from Staten Island.
I used to be scared af to travel thru the BQE. Now I’m even more scared knowing that this has not being maintained to keep safe for commuters and commercial traveling. This would be something they need to address immediately. So I would vote to shut it down. This will temporarily force commuters to seek other transportation methods and reroute the commercial freights. But it’s for the good of the travelers thru BQE in the future.
This reminds me of a portion of I-70 in Colorado near Glenwood Springs, a few hours west of Denver. The two directions are somewhat stacked/terraced because the canyon it's in is so narrow. That's kinda sketchy to drive through, but this just seems like a whole new level of horror. Lol
I really appreciate the effort you put in to covering the nuances of things like this instead of just defaulting to "government bad" like so many others
For real, especially since we have a culture of “govnemrnet shouldn’t be powerful or do anything”
The simplistic "Government Bad" attitude often ends up being a self fulfilling prophecy in America.
@@phyein4815 not by accident, either. There are a lot of powerful interests very determined to show government doesn't work by sabotaging it.
One of the worst things about America is how we want the government to be weak in public services while we want to continue to strengthen harmful institutions like the military and such
@@avacadomangobanana2588 the government shouldn't be too powerful though.
I live near the BQE in northern Brooklyn. If that sucker was shut down forever, we'd see even more of these enormous trucks and freight trailers traversing through the very narrow streets here in Brooklyn, which would definitely lower the quality of life for Brooklyn residents. The BQE is crucial for north-south truck and freight traffic. But there's no comparable east-west highway. The result--the very narrow east-west arterial road on which I live. Every single morning I see these enormous freight trucks and trailers barreling through my little narrow street. These vehicles are not meant for these streets. But they have no other way to get on to the BQE or to disembark from it. I would hate to see the rest of the borough become my street--it's nerve-wracking and annoying living on it.
surprised just don't have a ferry type that can handle that type of traffic until that area is fixed. Doubt it would be cheaper in the short term. But probably would be in the long haul. Instead of just patching here and there. But, doubt that would be feasible. And yes i was on the bridge here in MN back in 2007 like 2 weeks before it fell.
Those heavy trucks using streets not designed for the purpose will also cause structural damage to the roadway and underlying infrastructure which will require more frequent maintenance and perhaps total rebuilding. This would prolong inconvenience and quality of life issues long after trucks are routed away from the area.
make it for big trucks only and make it a rail system on the other side
What if I told you freight can be transported with things other then trucks.
@@21nickik Yeah, like what? Rickshaws? All those bodegas, pizzerias, delis, restaurants, home improvement stores, and supermarkets need to have deliveries every day, some more than once a day. Are you going to run a rail line to each and every one of them? You like ordering stuff on line? How do you think those boxes get to your doorstep?
One of the oddities of New York City is that it is almost totally cut off from the freight railroads. There is a single track line over the Hells Gate Bridge and a car float operation across the New York Harbor. That's it. If you want to send a rail car from Long Island City a few miles west to New Jersey, it has to go all the way up to Selkirk, NY, near Albany to cross the Hudson. Even if they build a tunnel from Bayridge to the Greenville Yard in New Jersey, you would still need a truck for the last mile.
What isn't mentioned here is that the BQE technically ends at Red Hook, but most New Yorkers consider the Gowanas Expressway, which which leads to Verrazano Bridge, the BQE. All those trucks are coming in from New Jersey through Staten Island to the BQE, as are many New Yorkers driving to work in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The traffic is horrible even as they have tried to change it from three to two, create a shoulder. I hope they come up with something soon.
Unfortunately, when the Verrazano Bridge was being built, they should have also done a complete rebuilding of the Belt Parkway into an expressway in order to give trucks an alternate route off the bridge, and a more direct route to Queens, Nassau and Suffolk.
Used to use the BQE every sun nite and mon morning in the 1980s on the way to and from the old Fulton St Fish Market on the Peck Slip under the Brooklyn Bridge. On the Manhattan side by way of the Manhattan Bridge. Used to deliver 45000 lbs of fresh fish from the cold waters of Northern Manitoba Canada.
Hey B1M, would you consider doing perhaps a mini series on some new traditional architecture being built around Europe and North America? Anything in some traditional style, art deco, nouveau, classical, federal, etc. It would be interesting to see some new builds in these styles. Cheers, dude!
A helpful addition to this video discussion might have been a brief recounting of how the city handled the 'replacement' of the West Side Highway. That goes back a ways, so younger viewers might have no real idea of what happened to that 'highway upgrade"
They should have built the Westway replacement for it, the WSH is such an obsolete deathtrap is is ridiculous.
@@johnathin0061892 As I remember, at the time the estimates were running about 3 billion and NYC was a bit short on cash in those days. I do remember driving on it before they took it down. I remember a Village Voice article at the time where they interviewed one of the major potential contractors and he said "I don't care what they want If they want a pyramid we'll build it." Funny how some things stick in one's head over the years.
It went from mostly elevated to ground level.
@@nathanieldaiken1064 It also went from a limited-access highway to a regular arterial.
If they had rebuilt the West Side Highway as a highway, it would have stop and go traffic for miles down to lower Manhattan. What they did works rather well. Ed Koch was right.
they've been repairing the BQE for at least 40 years. It's a steady source of income for construction companies. It crazy that residents can't get it repaired
Yes!! I moved to Bklyn in 1990 and they've always closed off certain intersections on the Gowanus Expressway for repair and nothing seemed to come out of that. And they've stopped these repair work for the past 17 years.
This street is the perfect example, why, in some cases, it is not good to think about everyones opinion. The street needs to be repaired, and that quickly. but because everyone has a opinion on that along with wishes and desires....nothing happens and everyone loses.
Fantastic video as always. I remember flying down the BQE at 4AM in the back of an overloaded tour van hauling a woefully overweight trailer full of music gear. Every pothole felt like a car crash. Sleep was simply impossible. Good times.
Did that have any impact on the filming of the following day's episode of your late night show?
@@pianoman47 the dark circles around my eyes could not be hidden with any amount of concealer.
Big thing happened today!! i started reading your video titles in your voice in my head!!! Congratulations you've done it!!!
This reminds me greatly of the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto.
I travel through there when I go visit my mom in Brooklyn.
As usual, another outstanding presentation! I was born and raised in Brooklyn, and although I no longer reside there, it will always run through my veins. The time has come for this matter to be addressed without fail or delay! The only thing that I would change is somehow incorporating subway into the design as opposed to a tram to service the waterfront and Red Hook area that currently do not have service. These areas are developing and we need to develop a transportation network now, while in the planning stages, to get people out of their cars.
I'm not convinced that we shouldn't just get rid of it.
Any repairs to that, even painting it will cause unimaginable traffic jams.
I almost died on the BQE. This was way back... where I was on it when it was 3-lane. With little notice, it shrank down to 2-lane. Wasn't ready for that. I only escaped because someone was kind enough to let me into their lane - last second.
Morning blessing Thank You B1M
You're welcome - good morning!
One More Lane Will Fix It.
Last thing we need is a part of the cantilever falling like how that piece of the Miller Highway at Canal street finally gave out with the weight of a truck ages ago.
It sucks so badly. It used to be faster to take side streets until everyone got GPS in their phones. Plus the city taking away lanes on major streets for busses and bicycle lanes makes it even that much worse
I always thought that NYs biggest long term concern will be infrastructure. With millions of people and no room to grow, it’ll be very difficult for any sort of road, subway repairs, rebuild/restore projects. Good luck with this.
BQE might be falling apart but B1M quality is definitely not...
Haha, thanks!! 🙌🔥
super interesting!
Just figured everyone should know i listened to this while sitting in traffic on the BQE :)
Americans don't necessarily love their cars, its just that the alternatives aren't great. Precisely because of infrastructure like this, people choose to have cars and live further from work and school. They compete with rail projects which limits the growth of the public transit network which again makes having a car a more convenient option. With more car ownership, there is more demand for car infrastructure. Its basically a self perpetuating prophecy.
Very much agree. "Americans love their cars" is an odd justification for a massive infrastructure project. Especially striking for a city where only half of residents own cars and many of those use public transit when they can. The 10 to 15% of traffic that is freight does need a solution, but fortunately that doesn't require 3 lanes in each direction. The car commuters would be much better served by transit, whether that is is rail, bus, bike, etc. New York has the best rail infrastructure in the country, with the subway, 3 commuter rail systems as well as Amtrak. Car infrastructure competes with transit for funds and space and often makes better alternatives less safe and convenient, slowing busses and endangering pedestrians and cyclists.
And all this ageing, crumbling highway infrastructure was built and public transit completely neglected when Americans did love their cars. Now in most cities we're stuck with single-mode transportation: cars only.
Oh trust me, we love our cars! 🚗💨
@@dlazo32696 I'm sure there are people in prison who love same sex intercourse, but there are also those who would prefer the opposite sex if they could have it.
@@Basta11 yooo! Haha
This feels quite similar, albeit in a much bigger scale, to one of the projects I'm working on which is the remdial repairs to a viaduct section of the M8 motorway that runs through the North of Glasgow.
Questionable construction methods, when it was built, has resulted in the connections between the piers and the bridge deck severely corroded up to the point that the existing 4 lane viaduct is considered safe if it only support 2 lanes of traffic or less. The solution consists of a series of propped structure that transfers the load from the bridge deck and down to the existing foundations, which are in pretty good condition. However the works have severely affected traffic in that neck of the woods and it seems to have a prolonged construction programme which will likey to cause further delays.
Even though its a much smaller and less glamorous project, a brief video highlighting the solutions, and issues with construction, I reckon would be pretty interesting.
I drove on BQE eastbound every morning a few years ago, before they took away one lane. It sucked then, it is god awful now, I can’t imagine a detour route for 5+years to do the necessary repairs/redesign. It will quite literally cause traffic to back up into NJ
Brooklyn as a whole would actually make a great topic for a video... I recently visited for the first time in a while and was quite surprised at how much it's changed and developed in just a couple years. It's finally starting to recover not just from COVID but from decades of bad urban planning. For example, there are tons of new properly dedicated bike lanes and a number of streets have been fully switched to one way a la Barcelona. I'm not sure if this is an intentional policy or more of a happy accident but I'd love to know more.
gentrification maybe
It's also priced out a lot of the locals and is being demographically replaced by newcomers alone.
@@realtalk6195 That's good, I think money makes for a better place. If you can not afford it, you aren't welcome. That's how it is and how it should be. We don't want poor people making the cities unsafe and dirty! Cities full of people with money makes for a much more beautiful and safe place. I am all for it, to push poor people out and bring people with money in, so that the city can be revived, by investing in it, you know restoring the crumbling buildings and replacing the dirty spaces with beautiful parks, streets, little shops/cafés and homes. Where I live, it is quiet, safe and beautiful with parks all around, I don't want to change that for the worse.
As a transplant from San Francisco to NYC, collapsing freeways is something you don’t want to live through.
The BQE placement along a scenic waterway is a misuse of the land. See City Nerd”s recent video about it.
A bit late for that, given what happened in 1973...
SF has good infrastructure the only times freeways of collapsed is in earthquakes
@@Student0Toucher San Francisco is terrible period.
@@dlazo32696 Luckily I was talking specifically about the infrastructure buddy
@@sonicboy678 what happened in 1973?
I hated driving down the BQE whenever I had to work at Citi-Field!!!! Literally, I had to leave 2 hours beforehand just to get to work on time! Lol!
I lived next to the BQE in 2018 in sunset park brooklyn they where working on the street under it even back then.
In the Netherlands a sort of project is finished in the city of Maastricht in the South. There an highway artery through the city (A2), was replaced with a double deck tunnel, with on top local road with trees and grass.
Perfect place for your imported diversity to conduct “peaceful” operations.
Would be nice, but in NYC that would take over 55 years to complete and cost 3 trillion dollars
@@k_schreibz3 trillion dollars in 55 years is incredible when you consider the fact that the military budget was increased by $700 billion between 2021 and 2022. Without assuming the growth in the budget that will happen in 55 years, with the current 1.5 trillion dollar budget, we will have wasted 82.5 trillion dollars on death and suffering, whereas 3 trillion to improve domestic life sounds quite nice
@@Xavier_the_Boxing_Nerd I mean, I don't want to defend the military industrial complex but it's not correct to say that 82.5 trillion dollars are wasted on death and suffering. The money doesn't just disappear. It pays peoples salaries and makes it back into the private economy as well.
@@twrecks6279 The entire point of a military is death and suffering, either threatening it, or carrying it out.
I'm a simple man, I see a new B1M video and i press like
Haha, thanks so much!
You guys have it good it’s worst in Philly
This video made me wonder what the progress was like on the Tri-Borough Express, seems like if that was in place, some of the traffic could be removed. Did the abandonment of the freight route happen soon after the BQE was completed?
NGL I love driving along that Central section of the BQE, such incredible views of the Manhattan skyline. BUT, at most times of the day the traffic is brutal, and the potholes and bumps are even moreso. Pretty sure my suspension is outta whack bc of the BQE.
The cantilever is not the only problem with the BQE. Flooding is a major issue as well. The BQE is Brooklyn's other roller-coaster. Of the many ideas proposed, the BQP is the most attractive but also the least likely to succeed. Obviously inspired by the High Line, it would be a project on a scale the borough has probably never seen. It would be more difficult to produce than BB, MB and WB combined. The cost would be staggering, and even if it were to succeed, accidents and other problems in the tunnels would stress city resources in a way Brooklyn has not experienced. That said, taking a bold move to redesign the cantilever in this way would help future generations. And Brooklyn would get another park, though I loved the old waterfront. Gritty, dirty, abandoned. An eye sore. Beautiful.
Ahh I love that stretch late at night!
This is spot on. I dread on the thought of taking the BQE. There is always traffic, on both side, crazy bumps, etc. Will I ever see a major change in the infrastructure during my lifetime? Probably not.
There has been so much development going on in that area that I'm surprised the BQE has not been part of the "plan". Everyone wants to develop there but at the same time they don't want to accommodate for the regular people.