The Highway Teardown Tour

NARRATION: When Zohran Mamdani ran to be the mayor of New York City, he ran, as you may know, on big plans, big ideas that he talked about every chance he got -- including on transportation. 

ARCHIVAL: Making buses free, and that's something that we will deliver

Buses should be fast

we will make those buses fast and free.

MUSIC: Enter

NARRATION: But now that he is in office there is another issue facing the mayor – that is not buses, not housing, not schools – it’s something Zohran Mamdani did not run on or talk about much in the campaign. But it could become a defining issue of his time in office: the BQE. The Brooklyn Queens Expressway – specifically a half-mile long stretch of this highway that is truly falling apart, and is now his direct responsibility.

Everyone agrees something has to be done. The question is…what?

MUSIC: Post

NARRATION: My name is Ian Coss, welcome to The Big Dig Highway Teardown Tour. Today: what to do with the BQE? And I’ll just note that this highway we are talking about today is a truly bizarre one-of-a-kind piece of infrastructure: Brooklyn's infamous "triple cantilever." Some of you will know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don’t, I might suggest a quick google image search of the term “triple cantilever”. You'll see a three level structure about a half mile long built into a hillside, with each level just hanging out in space with no support at all beneath that outer edge -- cantilevered -- in engineering speak. There really is nothing else quite like it, and therefore no problem quite like it. But within all that quirkiness, there is also a basic challenge that many cities on this tour can relate with: the highway is falling apart. The time to rethink it is now. Doing nothing is not an option.

We recorded this conversation live at WNYC’s Greene Space.

MUSIC: Out

Ian Coss: So the plan for tonight is I want to zero in on a one mile stretch of a single highway that I think is emblematic and illustrative of highway challenges around this city and around this country. This is a highway that has been in and out and in and out and in the news for a long time. And so I did a quick search of the WNYC archives for some of the recent coverage of it.

And, uh, this is a little bit of what I found.

ARCHIVAL: Brian Lehrer, WNYC.

So what can be done to fix New York City's most hated mile of express?

The debate over what to do with the most crumbling part of the Brooklyn Queens Express,

crumbling stretch of the Brooklyn Queens Express

crumbling part of the Brooklyn Queen Expressway.

Well, at this point in the game, listeners should be familiar with the term triple cantilever. Should they?

Ian Coss: Should they? Um, and that last voice in there is none other than WNYC's own transportation reporter, Stephen Nessen.

I love it when you hear those back to back, you get this exact phrase, “most crumbling stretch of”. Could we get some fresh copy maybe?

Stephen Nessen: Uh, deteriorating

Ian Coss: It's called a thesaurus

Stephen Nessen: falling apart

Ian Coss: So I'm curious, has the term triple cantilever truly entered the New York lexicon?

Stephen Nessen: I think for New York residents, yes.

Ian Coss: You can just drop that in casual conversation?

Stephen Nessen: I would, yes, but on air, I think my editor would prefer me to explain it a little bit before I use it. Or after.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm. But it, but it's gotten to the point where you're kind of like, nah, maybe, maybe we can just, just throw that in there. Yeah. I'm guessing this is a non-representative sample, but are we familiar? Okay. Before we get to the infamous triple cantilever, I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of a bigger picture. Um, this is part of a larger highway called the BQE: Brooklyn Queens Expressway. What is it? Why does it exist?

Stephen Nessen: So, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway is the only major highway that can really connect all the five boroughs.

It was built between 1937 to 1964. It's a twelve-mile interstate, actually.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm.

Stephen Nessen: Part of it's owned by the state. The small cantilever section is actually owned by the city.

Ian Coss: Okay. So it's really be like the, the B-B-M-S-Q

Stephen Nessen: It's a little – it’s a bit of a mouthful of that acronym.

Ian Coss: Okay.

Stephen Nessen: Um, 130,000 daily vehicles, 13,000 of them are trucks.

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Stephen Nessen: So it gets traffic. Uh, everyone in this room knows the book The Power Broker. I'm sure it's on your shelves, whether you've completed it or not. Um, but Robert Moses is the person responsible for building this roadway. Someone who's comfortable cleaving neighborhoods, especially in particularly immigrant, Black, Latino, low income, which had to be destroyed to build this highway.

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Stephen Nessen: And part of his goal was to connect the Long Island highways he built to Manhattan to get some of that traffic into the city: goods, workers. Obviously, you know about highways. This was the time to build them. The golden, golden era.

Ian Coss: Yeah. So we found some audio from the opening ribbon cutting of part of the BQE, including Robert Moses. Um, could you play that clip for us just to give us a little sense of the mood in 1950.

ARCHIVAL: I believe that this beautiful sunshiney day is an auspicious beginning for this great highway. This one of the greatest city arterial roots ever launched. This is the pride and the pet of Brooklyn.

Ian Coss: So it was the Brooklyn Borough President at the time, calling it the pride and the pet of Brooklyn. That was the mood then. What's the mood now?

Stephen Nessen: Oh, I mean, now it's, uh, if you're stuck on it, of course it's misery.

Ian Coss: Do you drive the BQE yourself?

Stephen Nessen: I do. I have.

Ian Coss: Do you have a favorite stretch?

Stephen Nessen: It's been a long time. I think, uh, you know, like my children hold their breath when they drive past a graveyard. Sort of hold your breath while you're driving uh under the triple cantilever or on it, I guess.

Ian Coss: Yeah. Yeah. And does your car have some scars?

Stephen Nessen: Uh, the shocks have been replaced so many times at this point.

Ian Coss: Yeah. Now, to be fair, I, it's really easy to like, beat up on a road like the BQE.

Stephen Nessen: Yeah.

Ian Coss: It's ugly. It kind of, it, it, it begs for it, but it also serves a purpose. So can you talk about why it is still there and why some folks want to keep it there?

Stephen Nessen: Sure. So really the, the triple cantilever we're talking about is 0.4 miles. A minuscule part of this larger highway really that runs along a really, really nice neighborhood called Brooklyn Heights.

Ian Coss: Yep.

Stephen Nessen: Very wealthy, great apartments. Classic historical. Um, as Moses was building this highway, he had to get through this neighborhood to connect the northern section that runs through Queens to downtown Brooklyn with the southern section

Ian Coss: Yeah

Stephen Nessen: Um

Ian Coss: And that connection is key, 'cause like you said, this was kind of the missing link in his grand vision to get you out to Long Island and Staten Island and those places.

Stephen Nessen: Exactly. Uh, but unlike, you know, some of the other neighborhoods that were completely obliterated in, you know, to build this highway, to keep it straight or whatever it was, that wasn't gonna work in Brooklyn Heights. So as a sort of solution, I suppose, they built this very, you know, advanced engineering structure at the time and you sort of stacked the highway.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm.

Stephen Nessen: Unlike in other parts of the road. And as a sort of treat or a cherry on top, they built this beautiful promenade on top.

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Stephen Nessen: Great view, great place to look out, people get married there, proposals are held there, all kinds of things. Um, and that was sort of a, you know, a bonus for building this sort of highway in this beautiful neighborhood.

Ian Coss: Got it.

Stephen Nessen: But over time, you know, this was built a long time ago. It wasn't designed for the sort of current standards of vehicles that we have today.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm

Stephen Nessen: Big trucks, heavy cars

Ian Coss: Yeah

Stephen Nessen: A lot more traffic than, you know, when the roadway opened.

Ian Coss: Got it. I think that is a perfect segue to bring out our guests for the evening. So Stephen and I, we're just two dudes who like cover transportation. Um

Stephen Nessen: Two dudes with facial hair.

Ian Coss: Two dudes with facial hair, more hair on the bottom than on the top, um, who, who cover transportation. But we've got with us two fantastic guests who have lived and breathed this issue for many years.

Um, we've got Polly Trottenberg who has held many roles, including as Deputy Secretary of Transportation under Pete Buttigieg. But especially relevant to this conversation, she was the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation from 2014 to 2020.

Polly, please join us. And we've also, and also with us, we've got Laura Birnback, who is the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Heights Association that Steven was just referencing. This is a neighborhood advocacy group that was founded in 1910. All right? And has played a historic role in many highway debates in the city. So, Laura Birnback.

So Laura, I wanna start with you. Stephen offered us bit of the lore of the triple cantilever. Um, could you talk about the role of your organization, the Brooklyn Heights Association, in the origin story of this unusual structure? How did this come about?

Lara Birnback: Sure um, the BQE construction started, I believe. in the thirties and finally finished in 1960. But in the, um, middle era, in the forties, was when Robert Moses brought his plan for the BQE to Brooklyn Heights, as you referenced. Um, and originally, the story goes, one story goes, that originally the plan would've been to run the highway along Hicks Street, and it would have taken out, uh, many, many, many 19th century historic homes, cut right through the heart of Brooklyn Heights in the way that the highway cut through the heart of many other neighborhoods.

Mm-hmm. Uh, when the BQE was being constructed.

Ian Coss: Yeah, I, I can't picture Hick Street, but like brownstones?

Lara Birnback: Brownstones, brick, federal town homes. So the story is that, when the plans came out, uh, in the mid forties, the neighborhood, led by the Brooklyn Heights Association, which as you noted was, or had already been in, in existence since 1910, mobilized to fight back. Brooklyn Heights had many of its own power brokers.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm

Lara Birnback: Um, and they were ready to step up and fight this plan. Uh, eventually what happened was Moses was persuaded to change the route of the highway and build it along the Brooklyn Heights Bluffs, um, essentially above Furman Street.

Ian Coss: What did it look like beforehand? Was it truly a cliff?

Lara Birnback: It was a cliff, and there were

Ian Coss: Let's build a highway on the cliff

Lara Birnback: There were homes, there were homes that had, uh, beautiful back gardens that extended down the hillside. So these were private gardens that belonged to the lucky homeowners of the time. Uh, and that was part of the way that the Promenade or the Esplanade came about, was that as part of this compromise, those homeowners would lose their private gardens, but a beautiful public space, a beautiful public garden would be placed on top.

Ian Coss: Got it

Lara Birnback: Um, there's an alternative story there.

Ian Coss: Okay. So that's mythology number one.

Lara Birnback: Yeah. Mythology number one.

Ian Coss: Give us version number two.

Lara Birnback: Maybe not mythology, but um, origin story number one.

Ian Coss: Okay.

Lara Birnback: Um, origin story number two is that Moses was actually too clever by half and knew that he would face opposition in Brooklyn Heights. He was obviously not a naive guy. He knew what he would be up against in Brooklyn Heights and that he leaked or somehow these plans to run the highway along Hick Street leaked, causing a great hue and cry, when in fact, all along his plan had been, for reasons that he and his engineers decided were preferable, to run the highway, uh, along the bluff. That was his intention all along. But yet he allowed the neighborhood to feel like they had some sway over his plans. I don't know the truth. Uh, I don't know whether it's story one or story two, but they're, they're both interesting to think about.

Ian Coss: Stephen, thoughts?

Stephen Nessen: I read that

Ian Coss: Which version?

Stephen Nessen: he sent his – the second version – I read that he actually sent surveyors out to very obviously look like surveyors. Because

Ian Coss: It’s theatrical surveyors.

Stephen Nessen: Yeah. Like over the top. So I believe one of the local Brooklyn papers wrote about Moses' plan and that’s how it snowballed and, and got on folks' radar.

Ian Coss: So Polly, you come into office in the city in 2014. So now we're decades, many decades later. This triple cantilever with the promenade on top, these layers of highways stacked along what was once a cliff. What is the state of that whole structure when you come into office?

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah. And there's, there's a little bit of more modern history, which is as Lara was saying, BQE was sort of built in a period from the thirties through the sixties.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm

Polly Trottenburg: So by the time you got to the early, early 21st century, it was in pretty poor condition.

And, you know, the deviousness of Robert Moses, he also cut corners and built in a lot of places, pretty substandard highways. So it had been, I think conversations in New York had been happening at, by the point I became commissioner, probably for twenty years about this highway starting to fall apart.

We're spending, both the city and the state are spending a lot of money to maintain it. At some point, you wanna do something that's gonna be more cost effective and fix it. And some in this room, you may even remember that the state sort of jumped into the fray in around 2010 and came in with a proposal.

And it was also met with a big firestorm. And the state essentially, I think it's fair to say, beat a hasty retreat. So when I came in, the state was not sort of interested in being part of the process.

And you know, as we talk about the complexities of the BQE. Most of the BQE, it's about twenty miles long, is owned by the state except for the infamous section that runs between Atlantic and Sand Streets. That 1.2 miles, which is the most complicated, not just the triple cantilever, but the, there's a lot, if those of you who have driven over it and knows the way it goes up and down and weaves

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm

Polly Trottenburg: and it's, it's an incredibly complicated piece of infrastructure. So when I came in, and it's easy to look back in hindsight and second guess yourself, but when I came in, you know, my bridge engineers were already starting to talk to me on a pretty regular basis about their concerns about the, the safety of the structure and what we might need to do.

And we did make our entreaties to the state to see if they wanted to be part of that discussion. And there just wasn't a lot of appetite there.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm

Polly Trottenburg: Um

Ian Coss: And is it really, I mean, this, this section is so unusual the way there are these three layers, and each layer is only supported on one side. Right? That's, that's what makes it a cantilever. Are there unique challenges to maintaining that kind of structure or repairing that kind of structure?

Polly Trottenburg: There are a lot of unique challenges to that. It's very hard to maintain. It's very, people who live near it in Brooklyn Heights know this, it’s noisy because it vibrates a lot because it, it doesn't, it's only supported on one side. It's very hard to do the work piecemeal 'cause you can't really route traffic around it. If you, if you think of a highway that's supported on both sides, you can maybe close one lane and get cars to go around the other side. It’s really not so easy to do on a cantilever. So, and just to add to the complexity of sort of what we confronted diving in, there are four different subway lines that run under it. There's a major sewer interceptor, there's a whole bunch of other utilities.

So in addition to just the sheer complexity of the engineering of the highway. There is just a, a bounty of other types of typical New York City infrastructure that run underneath it.

Ian Coss: Yeah

Polly Trottenburg: Um, I can safely say this, no one in their right minds would've built something like that in a more modern era because it is so very complicated to go back and repair.

Ian Coss: As I understand it, the two of you, Stephen and Polly, went on tours, or maybe Polly, you were the one giving the tour.

Polly Trottenburg: We, we, we did.

Ian Coss: Could you kinda set the scene of what it actually looked like inside?

Polly Trottenburg: A hundred percent. No, and look, as we started the

Stephen Nessen: That, that was 2018, right?

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah. When we first started bringing plans out, and obviously a lot of folks in this room know, big political firestorm there.

And one thing we decided to do, because it is almost an incomprehensibly complicated piece of infrastructure, was to start taking journalists and elected officials and community members, and by the way, a, you know, an amazing crew of engineers and other folks who had deep expertise, to go and look underneath it. And

Ian Coss: Yeah

Polly Trottenburg: We started to peel back some of the parts of the wall, which had not been peeled back.

Ian Coss: When you say peel back, you mean like jackhammer back?

Polly Trottenburg: Jackhammer back. I mean, peel back.

Ian Coss: Is it actually like hollow inside? Like you open it up and there's a

Polly Trottenburg: Parts of it are, parts of it aren't. Um, it's

Ian Coss: You can just walk around under there

Polly Trottenburg: and there's weird, like old pieces of stuff back there and things that got left behind and it's just really like

Ian Coss: Really? Like old equipment that was just abandoned?

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah, it's, it's quite astonishing and, you know, to go underneath it and you can look up and, you know, see holes where the cars are driving over and just feel the sheer kind of sound and force of the volume of traffic. I mean

Stephen Nessen: I mean, for me, right, it was like seeing the light coming through the concrete and that didn't seem right.

Polly Trottenburg: And, and you know, when you're transportation commissioner and you see the light coming through and you know that that structure is carrying 150,000 vehicles a day, right?

Ian Coss: Right

Stephen Nessen: Yes

Polly Trottenburg: Which makes it one of the busiest highways in this entire region. It, it, it doesn't feel right either.

Ian Coss: Right. A different kind of light at the end of the tunnel.

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah

Ian Coss: Not the light you want at the end of this tunnel.

Lara Birnback: Don’t go towards that light.

Ian Coss: Don't go towards the light.

Stephen Nessen: Yeah. And we were told at that time, I think, every fifty feet there are joints that are leaking and damaged. And that also seemed really troubling.

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah, it was.

Stephen Nessen: I mean, that's one way to alarm people and get people's attention is take journalists there, show them these holes and tell them: this is a problem.

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah

Stephen Nessen: That you can see with your own eyes.

Polly Trottenburg: And I don't think, we weren't trying to alarm people, but I just think there was a lot of misunderstanding about the nature and complexity of the structure.

Stephen Nessen: Yeah

Polly Trottenburg: And we just thought it would be useful for people. I didn't, we didn't want people running out screaming. And we tried to reassure people that we were doing a lot of things on a day-to-day basis to maintain the structure. But I, I do think to some degree, seeing it with your own eyes was just helpful in understanding the complexity of the challenge.

Ian Coss: Yeah. And what I love is when you listen to those stories from say, 2018, you'll hear, and there something has to be done by 2026. Otherwise, dire, dire things will happen.

Stephen Nessen: Right, right.

Ian Coss: Here we are in 2026.

Stephen Nessen: Well, I mean, to the DOT's credit, and I know Polly can talk about this, uh, the alarm bells were rang and a lot of folks did something.

Ian Coss: Yeah

Stephen Nessen: Not necessarily what you would think of as like, well, let's replace it or, or whatnot. But these short term fixes to like extend the life of that section of the roadway.

Ian Coss: Right

Stephen Nessen: Um, and some of them, you know, are in place today and seem very effective at least to buy some time while we come up with, while they come up with a different solution.

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah. I mean, we were fortunate and, after sort of things we first proposed met with fierce political resistance. We, we did form a commission. We're lucky some of the members of that commission are in the audience tonight. And it was a great group. Civic leaders, engineers, transportation thinkers, a a lot of really creative people.

And we did start to hash out some of the things that I think have helped extend the life of the structure. Doing better monitoring.

Ian Coss: Yeah

Polly Trottenburg: Working with the state actually to improve the enforcement of overweight trucks.

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: Re-striping it so that you would have a smoother traffic flow. And so there were, I think, a lot of solutions that have helped

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm

Polly Trottenburg: maintain the structure. Other ideas still on the table from, from folks today.

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: You know this, the debate right now is can you keep doing that? At what point does that just start not to work? And I think that's part of the question that still remains on the table.

Stephen Nessen: But there was two options floated at the time.

Ian Coss: Yeah I want to – indulge us in the fierce resistance part.

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah

Ian Coss: If, if you're willing to relive that for a moment.

Polly Trottenburg: It's, it's a little traumatic, but I'll relive it with you.

Ian Coss: Take us back to the options.

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah

Stephen Nessen: So there were two options. One was to build a temporary elevated roadway at the level of this lovely promenade.

Ian Coss: Yep

Stephen Nessen: Which would essentially put traffic in people's backyards in Brooklyn Heights.

While that's up there, they could demolish the roadway below and build another one. The other plan was to do it, uh, piece by piece, over eight years, twenty-four weekends of full lane closures. Both of these would've cost, at the time, about $4 billion and potentially could have been done close to now if they had started at that time.

Ian Coss: So, Lara. These two plans come to you, your organization, you know, represents the residents along this promenade who would have to look out and listen to and follow along with this construction project. How did those plans hit you?

Lara Birnback: So what happened was, um, the, the plans did not land well in Brooklyn Heights. Um

Ian Coss: Sort of understatement.

Lara Birnback: There was, there was considerable, um, there was considerable outrage, actually, I think that's probably a good word to use, um, at the idea. I think people certainly understood that something needed to be done. Nobody wanted to see any kind of collapse or a piece of concrete falling onto someone. The, the seriousness of the situation, that was well understood by many people in the community. But I think the idea that a six lane highway would be built, um, on top of the promenade, which is not just an amenity for Brooklyn Heights, it's a world famous tourist destination.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm

Lara Birnback: So that that would be taken outta commission for eight plus years. Um, replaced with a six lanes of traffic outside of your window essentially. Um, was unacceptable. That it would be a mistake to address the cantilever without looking at the corridor in a much more holistic way.

Ian Coss: Yeah. Could you set the scene a little bit of the public meetings that took place and the community organizing that took place around this? Kind of take us in there.

Lara Birnback: You really wanna go back to the trauma, right?

Ian Coss: One moment longer and then we'll move on.

Lara Birnback: I mean, it was

Ian Coss: for, for someone like me who doesn't, wasn't there, doesn't follow. I just want to understand what that moment meant.

Lara Birnback: So the, the BHA, as the representatives of the neighborhood quickly mobilized. There was an event on the Promenade. There was a town hall meeting that was organized, um, that had a lot of – it, we happened to be in an election year. So, it was advantageous in a way for us, because many of the candidates who were interested in taking that office were aware of this debate and wanted to get in front of a community that is vote rich.

Um, and so we had a number of them come to a town hall that we had organized. The BHA at that time, similar to what we did I think when Moses was originally building the highway, we put forward an alternative plan of our own. We had commissioned a local architect, Mark Wooters, who developed a, a bypass highway.

One of the reasons we did that was because we felt like it was important not just to say no to something, but to try to come up with an alternative that would potentially be more palatable.

Ian Coss: Yeah,

Lara Birnback: I think, uh, our thinking and the conversation about the BQE as a whole has evolved a lot since that time. So at this point, you know, that's not a plan that we would put forward, but at the time it was an important way for us to demonstrate that there are other possibilities out there besides the two plans that the DOT had come up with.

Ian Coss: Yeah

Polly Trottenburg: I think, to sort of follow on from that, I think what Laris referring to, and it's interesting how the politics played out, which is for a long time the debate was solely around the triple cantilever.

These plans were very elaborate, very expensive, and only focused on sort of the section near Brooklyn Heights.

And so yeah, there was, there was that political debate going on, but then the political debate started to expand as communities and other parts of the corridor sort of said, well. Now you're talking about spending 10 billion just for Brooklyn Heights, but what about us? Mm-hmm. And that sort of expanded the debate to, we need the state at the table. 'Cause this is a quarter wide challenge. And also asking the question of how much, how much are we investing?

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: In mitigating on this, if, you know, hey, New York City, if you had 10 billion to spend on transportation or anything else, and you were concerned about equity and other things, how would you spend it?

Ian Coss: Right? Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: So It quickly grew from a hotspot debate, a fierce one to. Something that got much bigger and even more complicated and required, I think a lot more players to begin to solve.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm.

one of the things that strikes me about the BQE and other kind of road issues like this is that they, they kind of go through these cycles.

Where it'll, really heat up and there'll be a lot of ideas floating around and debates and meetings, and then it'll sort of simmer down and go into the background. So in that 20 18, 20 19 period, there was obviously a lot, a lot going on. What kind of quieted it? What was the signal? COVID

Polly Trottenburg: Well, I, I COVID, yes.

I think again, you know, sort of having a panel and saying we're taking the, you know, the options that everyone's the most angry off, off the table. We're gonna take a fresh look. We're gonna look at some ways that we can, some of the steps that we're taking to preserve the structure. Yeah. So we'll have more time to work through it.

And, you know, one thing I just wanted to note at that time, something that I thought was a great idea was the creation of, as you have a, here in New York, like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, different types of authorities. I really felt that would've been so helpful for the BQE, just very hard for the city to solve on its own, in the envelope of the part of the roadway that the city owned.

And, uh, I remember at that time assembly when Joanne Simon had a piece of legislation up in Albany. It was gonna create A-A-B-Q-E commission. I don't remember exactly the title that would've brought the city, the state parks department, MTA, port Authority, all the players, Brooklyn Bridge Park, all the players that could help produce that larger solution that people got interested in.

We can reduce truck traffic. Can we put more traffic on on the water? Can we bring more mass transit service? All those things which are way beyond the city's capabilities, but could be part of a, a commission that brought in all the right agencies. And I, I still think to this day, that would be a great solution to help even now think through all the, you know, all the ways that you could tackle.

The quarter.

Introduction: Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: And by the way, it's not just even that quarter, I mean, some of the things you wanna do to tackle the quarter are larger questions about in an era where everyone's getting things delivered and how, how do we manage truck traffic in New York City? How do we continue to expand our mass transit system, you know, in an era when we have fiscal constraints?

Ian Coss: So Laura mentioned COVID is sort of this signal that the, the debate was over for the time for you Polly. Was there a another moment when you felt like, okay, it's time to withdraw these plans we've been pushing and,

Polly Trottenburg: well, I think we withdrew them pretty quickly. So I mean, that, that sort of happened almost overnight, I'd say.

Um,

Stephen Nessen: was that disappointing?

Polly Trottenburg: No, I, I, I mean, contrary to what people believe, I was not particularly wedded to any particular idea. I think we did feel like we needed to get the debate started, but no, not disappointing in the slightest. Um, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to have a commission that brought a lot of great thinkers to the table.

I never, I never pretended that I thought the city had all the answers on it. I, I don't think the city does to this day. And it, it's interesting to me, you know, we had people say, it's a new administration. What's this mayor gonna do?

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm.

Polly Trottenburg: The challenge is much bigger than for the mayor. It requires state actors and other agencies and a lot of players, I think.

Ian Coss: Do you regret not pushing harder in that moment?

Polly Trottenburg: No, I don't think it was possible.

NARRATION: So what is possible now for the BQE? That's after the break.

BREAK

Ian Coss: So, Steven, could you catch us up to the present a little bit? It's been now. You know, so that was in 2018. 2019. What has happened since then?

Stephen Nessen: Well, a couple years ago, mayor Adams and his administration presented a series of ideas for how to deal with the triple cantilever. Um, and it's actually staggering when I went back to look and I asked the DOT, they said they've presented 40 design concepts for how to deal with this part of the roadway.

Ian Coss: Uh, just for that one stretch,

Stephen Nessen: which I can't even get my head around, but it's a lot. But, so they do all these workshops. They've done 19 public meetings with folks. Yeah. And they sort of come up with these fun names for different designs.

Ian Coss: Okay.

Stephen Nessen: One's called the stoop, another's called the Terraces, another one's called the Lookout. And for each one of these, there's also three variations of how it would work and either connect to Brooklyn Bridge Park or not. What to do with the, ostensibly the biggest problem is the traffic. Right?

Ian Coss: Right,

Stephen Nessen: right.

So are you gonna have the vehicles stacked on top of each other? Are they gonna be horizontally aligned? Uh, and there's multiple variations for each of those configurations that they've presented to the public, which I'm not sure how anyone in the public quite gets their mind around or chooses eye like that one or that one.

Ian Coss: Well, that's your job. Right.

Stephen Nessen: My job is to look at it and try to understand it, but it's even a lot for me to get my head around and I'm still looking at it.

Ian Coss: So Polly, I'm curious for you, looking ahead at this next chapter, the new administration. What are the lessons you take from your time in office that you feel are relevant now?

Polly Trottenburg: I mean, and I, I'll, I'll take the second just to broaden the lens. 'cause also I'm just coming, as you noted recently from the Biden administration. Yeah. And I got to sort of, I'm very familiar with the big dig, but I'm familiar with a lot of these projects all over the country.

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: And I've said this many times publicly. I'll say it again, none are as complicated or difficult as the BQE that is really in a class by itself. Um, but a lot

Ian Coss: of, and that's just not, that's not just New York exceptionalism

Polly Trottenburg: talking. It's, no, it's not New York exceptionalism. And that wouldn't be a good thing to brag about anyways. Um. But a lot of them are pretty difficult and they have some commonalities.

And I think New York example is, is in some ways the most heartbreaking, right? Which is in so many of these cases, neighborhoods were just, the way I've, heard it described, they were clear cut.

Um, and the devastation and the impact is incredibly complicated and many decades later, it's very hard in a lot of cases to fix. Mm-hmm. Um, just the costs, the complexity and finding the consensus.

And, you know, I was happy in the Biden administration. We, we had a couple of programs, one called Reconnecting Communities and one called Neighborhood. Uh, access and equity mm-hmm. That actually put some federal dollars

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: On the table. And that's, I think, just tremendously incentivizing and helpful.

If, if there's a lot of fraction and, and, and conflict and, and difficult questions about how to fix some of these roadways.

to have a federal partnership.

Yeah. And to have those resources as well.

Ian Coss: Did that experience of going around the country and, you know, going to Detroit or New Orleans, Rochester, did that change how you see the BQE? Did you come to appreciate the challenges in a different way?

Polly Trottenburg: Um, I mean, I think it, it reconfirmed for me just how hard the BQE is.

And you, you mentioned, Rochester. Um. You know, which is, I think a good example. My, my father's hometown and just in some cases in these upstate, upstate New York, Rochester and Syracuse, you had these highways. They were often trenches. So from an engineering point of view, somewhat easier to deck over than to deal with something like a triple cantilever.

And a lot of cases they were disgustingly overbuilt, so they flattened this neighborhood and built whatever, an eight lane highway, and then the traffic didn't come. You know, the complexity here is the BQE is a huge volume of traffic. And not that that's an insurmountable problem, but it's, it's, it's not so easy to just necessarily say, well, we will, without doing a lot of the other things that have been talked about it, it's harder to manage that.

So, but I, I do think there's a commonality that I've seen in a lot of places around the country. Fierce political opposition, very hard to achieve consensus. Litigation conflicts between city and state. I mean, these are, these are, I think, commonalities. And this is, you know, among the sort of tragic legacies of the interstate era and the damage that it did to so many communities, it's left not only sort of physical scars, but it, it's just left political and governance.

Mm-hmm. And community questions that are also scars in their own way.

Ian Coss: Yeah. There is a, there's a, a tragedy to the way that you can have these groups of people who all hate the highway, who are at the same time bitterly divided about it. And that, as you said, the legacy is, it, you know, divides communities, the highway, but it, it also divides, it creates this divisive, you know, physical remnant pits us against each other.

Polly Trottenburg: I think that's completely accurate and just also a haunting reminder for all of us that, that do transportation. Um, you know, these investments last for decades and cities and communities adapt and grow around them. And so, right. mistakes at that scale are profoundly difficult to fix. They can be fixed and communities around the country are doing it, and I think did it in Boston, um, not a, it's not a good analogy to New York is one difference in the big dig because

Ian Coss: Boston's not New York. I know.

Polly Trottenburg: No, no, it's not that I'm, I'm born in Boston. I'm not, I'm not being snobby about it, but just one.

Ian Coss: No, we have our own Bo exceptionalism don't have you.

Polly Trottenburg: I mean, just one big difference that I think is, is not the part of the dialogue here in New York that's not well known. I mean, the, the big dig project in Boston vastly expanded the highway network,

Ian Coss: right

Polly Trottenburg: in Boston, vastly first and foremost a

Ian Coss: highway expansion project.

Polly Trottenburg: Um, you know, here, here in New York, we're trying to, I think, aim for something much more difficult, which is to take a very high volume highway. And reduce capacity.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm.

Polly Trottenburg: And it's not that it can't be done, but it's much more challenging than either a project where you vastly expand the roadway network, or again, in the case of like a Rochester, where the highway was overbuilt, and you can, you can shrink it back down to a surface road without, without big impacts.

Lara Birnback: I have a couple, um, reflections please on, um, what, what the discussion has been. Um, I'll go back really briefly to this period. Um, when I, when I said COVID, so we had the expert panel report come out that really, um, was influential in, helping. The Brooklyn Heights community, as I said, think about the entirety of the BQE.

So, for example, there's an organization, um, El Puente in Williamsburg, in South Side Williamsburg, which had done a lot of work thinking about the BQE even before the debate about the cantilever came to be, um, they had worked very hard for 10 years on a community vision for capping the trench in Williamsburg.

It was called the BQ Green. So we were fascinated by this, wanted to learn more about it, reached out and said, Hey, we know you're struggling with the BQE. We're struggling with the BQE. can we learn about the situation in each other's neighborhoods? So.

We started with that. But the, the outreach to the other neighborhoods continued to the point where now there is a, uh, really fantastic coalition called the Brooklyn Queens Expressway Environmental Justice Coalition.

So we have members, community groups, citywide Transportation, groups like Rider's Alliance. We have groups like the BHA El Puente, UPROSE in, uh, sunset Park, red Hook Initiative. And the point about the division between different communities who all hate the BQE. Certainly we are a, a lot of groups that don't. Agree on everything.

Audience Q: Mm-hmm.

Lara Birnback: But we have come together to say Enough is enough with the BQE, it impacts all of us in a, in a terrible way, as I said, much more so in many of these frontline neighborhoods, frontline communities than in my own neighborhood. Um, and we're stronger together. We know that the powers that be frequently try to pit us against each other, or we're our own worst enemies and we pit ourselves against each other.

Yeah, yeah. But let's really try to overcome that and work together.

Ian Coss: Yeah. Are there lessons you took Laura from that, that really kind of, uh, heated period we were talking about, about how to be a more constructive and productive community advocate. Like does your organization approach the issue differently?

Lara Birnback: It's a good question. I think we approach the issue differently because we are no longer looking at the cantilever, you know, without looking at the rest of the corridor. So what was probably at the time, a fairly narrow or parochial vision responding to the problem as it was laid out.

For us, the problem as it was laid out for us in the community was the cantilever is structurally unsound. What are we going to do about the cantilever?

Introduction: Mm-hmm.

Lara Birnback: But it, so that's how we responded initially. What should we do about the cantilever? How is this gonna impact Brooklyn Heights? Um, but

I think having been to a number of community meetings about the BQE now, both under, um, the DeBlasio administration and under the Adams administration, one of the reasons that everybody comes away so frustrated, uh, you know, the city would say we had 19, I think Steven, you said we had 19 community meetings.

We've talked to the community. Mm-hmm. It's like, yes, those meetings were held and, and people did come all, although there were times when it felt like there were more DOT staff and consultants than actual residents of the neighborhoods. But one of the problems, I think is that. The public has not been presented in a, in a presented with a problem in a way that helps people to understand what the trade-offs are.

I think people are mature enough to understand that policy choices have trade-offs, and that there's not gonna be one perfect solution that's gonna make everybody happy. But it is not often presented to us in a way that if we did X, Y, or Z, here are the things that would result that you all might think are really positive.

But here are some of the drawbacks, right? and to allow people to wrestle with the trade-offs to bring their own values to the table. Because the community are, we are not transportation experts. We are not engineers. We are not gonna be able to weigh in on the the weedy aspects of the project, but we do know our values and we do know our neighborhoods.

And we have to be given a chance to really relate to the proposed solutions on those terms.

Ian Coss: This is maybe a weighty question, but on what you're saying, do you feel like there is such thing as too much community involvement?

Lara Birnback: I know why you're asking that question. Um,

I, I, and I understand some of the debates that are out in the ether, about, uh, you know, abundance and why projects don't happen and, um, the environmental review process and critiques of that. So I do, I do understand that. I think I would say that it's not the quantity of the engagement, it's the quality. That's what I was trying to get at. Yeah. With what I was just saying. Right. It's not how many meetings are you having, or how many residents have you given a survey to?

Introduction: Hmm.

Lara Birnback: Who maybe don't even really understand the survey that they're taking. You know, even as Steven noted, he's a transportation reporter, and he struggled as I did, to understand some of these 40 different options and plans that were laid out in one public meeting and to come up with some kind of Comprehensive understanding of, well, I, I think I like this, but I don't really understand what the impacts are.

we asked many times, we wanna understand what this would mean for the air quality in our neighborhoods. We wanna reduce vehicle miles traveled. How do these plans respond to the demands from the community for a less car intensive city? The communities that live along the BQE have the highest rates of asthma in all of Brooklyn.

How do these proposed plans respond to that? How does this respond to the climate pledges that the state and the city have gotten involved in? And we didn't really have. Any answers to those questions. So it's frustrating for the, for the powers that be for the decision makers who are holding these town halls and feel like they just get yelled at.

And it's frustrating for the community who feels like we're not speaking the same language and we don't, we're not, we're trying to solve different issues. You're trying to solve the problem of how to continue as much throughput as possible on the BQE, so everybody can get their goods from Amazon and single occupancy vehicles can drive to their heart's content.

But we're trying to solve the problem of how do you have better public health outcomes, how to have better climate outcomes, how to invest in public transit. So it's a little bit of talking at cross purposes.

Ian Coss: Yeah. Polly, how do you think an ultimate decision should be made? Who makes it? What factors should be front of mind and.

how do you ultimately resolve all those somewhat compatible, somewhat incompatible desires for this?

Polly Trottenburg: It's, it's a heavy question and I'm not sure. I can't say I succeeded at it. Um, I, I wanna, I wanna respond a little bit what Lara said. 'cause I, I, having in my own time done a million meetings, a big panel, a lot of town halls, brought in architects and engineers and experts.

I mean, I think we did try to engage. I think you're raising something though that makes this complicated. You're saying, well, we go to these meetings and no one talks about how they're gonna add more transit. Well, that's true because the MTA isn't at the table. And so it's, I think it's a little unfair in some cases to be, I'm mad at the city because they're not explaining how we're gonna get more subway service.

That's again, why I sort of feel like you need a commission that's gonna bring all those players together. 'cause to the extent that the community is frustrated that the things that they wanna hear about are not in the purview of the agencies. And that was my problem at New York City, DOTI didn't control the subways, I don't control freight movements on the water.

There are a bunch of things I don't control. Um, you have to demand that the right people are part of the process and just, you know, it isn't easy to be the official there saying, I'm sorry, I would love to expand the subway system too. Um, but I also wanna make sure the, the roadway doesn't collapse.

And, you know, I, I'm sort of caught between those two, know, look, I don't know that I have. The perfect answer about how to decide it, and I don't, think there's too much public input. I think it's such a complicated problem. Yeah. We need that continually. And I agree with Larry. It was a great development, I think for Brooklyn Heights and the neighboring communities. Yeah. To, and I

Ian Coss: don't ask that as an implicit

Polly Trottenburg: Yeah. To

Ian Coss: criticism. I was

Polly Trottenburg: Right.

Ian Coss: Honestly curious.

Polly Trottenburg: I just, I, I think, again, as I've said about a lot of these, they now have just some governance conflicts.

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: And you need to resolve them., You need the right players, you need an entity that can bring those players together to answer the comprehensive questions that the community has and has some power to, after all that input, to make some decisions and has the resources to do it.

I mean, that is sort of the port authority model and port authority model. There's lots of things we can like about it and things we can criticize about it, but that's, you know, an entity of that sort of heft.

Ian Coss: Yeah.

Polly Trottenburg: I think would be what you need maybe to get the kind of solution that I think everyone along the quarter wants. And that is right for New York City.

Ian Coss: Mm-hmm.

Could any of you imagine a New York City without the BQEI

Lara Birnback: imagine it every day. No, for real. Um, I, I imagine it every day. I don't pretend or imagine that it would be easy or simple or uncomplicated but I do think that it's possible, and I think that it's a choice. It's, it is a choice that we can make. We can choose, we can choose to do hard things.

Maybe that sounds, you know, facile. I, I don't, I'm really not a Pollyanna type of person. You can, you can ask my husband who's here somewhere in the room. I am not a, I am not a, um, a dreamer in that grand sense. But having worked on the BQE now for seven or eight years, having investigated what is possible in what has been possible in other cities around the world um, having talked with a number of, you know, co advocates along the highway, I, I think it is possible.

We just have to choose it. And I a hundred percent agree, um, with the idea that the governance is key and that we need a multistakeholder effort.

Polly Trottenburg: Um, and absolutely understand the frustration of being asked to solve a problem that is not within your jurisdiction. That's not possible and it's not fair. So we need to bring all these players to the table. Yeah. And remember, um, as we started out this discussion, the BQE, it's 150,000 vehicles a day. And there are places, and, you know, famously, like the Embarcadero in, in San Francisco is one and one could argue to some degree the west side highway right here in Manhattan where the road came down and the, the traffic was absorbed pretty easily. I, I've not really found an expert and. For what it's worth, who, who has told me that they think that volume of vehicles in that particular terrain of Brooklyn and a lot of the other places where the roadways come down, there may be another roadway that could carry some of the volume. So I think that's, that's the debate. And I, I agree it, anything is possible. Um, you know, if you go back to the history of the interstate era, and, remember the bargain was that the federal government paid 90% of the cost, well, by the way, starving mass transit systems all over the country, including here in New York. And it was an astonishing influx of federal dollars. There's been a bunch of different estimates about what it means in contemporary dollars, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.

And so just an investment, a federal investment of that side. And what it did to, in some ways to. Tie our country together and produce, you know, economic gains in other ways, destroy parts of cities in, in lasting ways. But just the sheer magnitude of the investment in federal dollars, to me says to do, to do something big like that.

And, and the big dig is the, is the example of that, which turned out to be, I think a 15, 14, $15 billion project with a big chunk of federal dollars. Part of the answer for these things that were really driven at the federal level and largely paid for by federal dollars is the federal government also needs to be a partner.

it's hard, even for a city and a state as rich as New York to come up, I think with the kind of resources that would be entirely if you, if you picture the 20 miles of the BQE and those of you who know the city can picture it to, to completely deck it over and fix everything and do all those things, it would be a much bigger project even than the Big Dig.

And I hope, you know, with more, maybe in more politically favorable times, the federal government will wanna come to the table again in

Stephen Nessen: what if we don't have that much time?

Polly Trottenburg: Well, thank goodness I'm not the commissioner anymore.

NARRATION: As of now, the City of New York says that the triple cantilever is safe to use until 2029, which would be Zohran Mamdani’s final year in office. After that, something will have to change. 

Thank you again to our guests: Polly Trottenberg and Lara Birnback. And of course to our partners at WNYC for this taping:  Stephen Nessen, Emily Botein, Clayton Guse, and Ryan Andrew Wilde.

The Highway Teardown Tour is produced by Fiona Boyd and myself, Ian Coss, with support from Isabel Hibbard. Our Editor is Lacy Roberts. The Executive Producer is Devin Maverick Robins. The artwork is by Bill Miller. The Big Dig is a production of GBH News and distributed by PRX.