Fix for a Hated NYC Highway: How About an $11 Billion Tunnel?

The City Council — and a top mayoral candidate — are looking to pull off a similarly ambitious feat with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a dilapidated Robert Moses-era eyesore of a highway running along the scenic Brooklyn waterfront.

They want to tear down the elevated highway, rather than just patch it, and build a 3-mile-long tunnel to replace it. The price tag: As much as $11 billion, according to a new engineering report commissioned by the City Council that is being released Monday.

“This is not just about rebuilding a highway, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build the city we deserve and need in the future,” City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who is running for mayor next year, said in a statement.

New York is turning for guidance to other cities that have found innovative solutions to transform aging roads into something less obtrusive. Seattle replaced the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel as part of a $3 billion overhaul. San Francisco is replacing a highway near the Golden Gate Bridge with a landscaped parkway.

But the cost could be staggering. Boston’s Big Dig project — moving a highway underground and lining the street above with parks — cost $24 billion and took more than a decade. Many of the projects have faced delays and major cost overruns.

Across the nation, cities are increasingly reevaluating their aging highways and seeking alternatives to curb congestion that is choking streets and worsening pollution. But only a handful of cities have seriously considered burying roadways underground because of the cost and logistics involved.

“It’s becoming more widely recognized that highways are detrimental to cities,” said Sean Doyle, a spokesman for Smart Growth America, an urban planning nonprofit in Washington. “The assumption that we need to simply replace a highway and maintain the same amount of lanes is wrong, especially in the era of climate change.”

In New York, the idea of replacing the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway with a tunnel has been debated over the years and dismissed largely because of the enormous price tag — money that officials and transportation advocates say could instead be spent on fixing the subway and other mass transit.

Now Arup, a global engineering firm hired by the City Council to look at alternatives, said the tunnel option should be reconsidered because of advancements in technology like digging and ventilation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and city transportation officials would have to embrace any plan for the highway, and the city has already reviewed — and rejected — the idea of a tunnel because of financial and logistical challenges, including digging in areas with subway lines and water tunnels and below residential neighborhoods with historic buildings.

Officials at City Hall said they would review the council’s report.

A 57-foot-wide tunnel could run underground from the Gowanus Canal to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, according to the 67-page report. The triple-cantilever structure that is part of the BQE would be torn down. The famed Brooklyn Heights Promenade that sits above it would be preserved. A four-lane boulevard would run from Atlantic Avenue to the Columbia Heights Bridge.

But Sam Schwartz, a transportation consultant, said that a tunnel might not be a realistic option — the existing highway is deteriorating and could be unsafe to traffic within five years. A tunnel could take many years.

“It would set back the process,” Schwartz said. “Here we have a patient — the BQE — in the intensive care unit. It cannot wait 10 years for a tunnel to be built.”

There is also the question of how to pay for a tunnel. City officials have planned for a far cheaper project in the range of $3 billion to $4 billion; $1.7 billion has been earmarked for the BQE reconstruction in the city’s capital plan. City officials have said they are seeking additional funding from state and federal agencies to pay for the rest.

Schwartz said some of the cost of a tunnel might have to be recovered through tolls. Still, he said, city officials should be thinking bigger than just rebuilding the highway.

“It is an opportunity for the community,” he said. “This should be a seminal project for the city.”

The City Council is also looking at a second option, known as a capped highway, that would create a buried roadway beneath Furman Street and Brooklyn Bridge Park, with a deck built over it to expand the park. That option could cost about $3.5 billion and take six years.

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In January, a panel appointed by de Blasio recommended immediately shrinking the highway to four lanes from six to reduce traffic, make it safer and extend its remaining years, while the city looked for a more permanent solution. The council agrees with that approach and called for continued maintenance and monitoring of the structure until it is replaced.

“We are exploring the next steps necessary to keep New Yorkers safe and moving, and will have more to say soon,” Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said in response to questions about the council’s plan.

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The city controls a 1.5-mile stretch of the BQE that is falling apart under the weight of 153,000 vehicles a day, or more than three times what it was built for in the 1940s. City transportation officials have warned for years that the highway has to be fixed.

But two initial plans presented by city officials in 2018 were widely assailed by local residents and community leaders. The more unpopular one called for closing the promenade for up to six years and building a temporary highway over it.

At that time, city officials seemed to rule out building a tunnel in a series of Twitter posts. They said they had previously studied a tunnel option and found many potential routes would be blocked by the city’s crowded underground infrastructure, which includes subway lines and water tunnels.

In another Twitter post, they added that digging a tunnel could crack the foundation of brownstones and other buildings above and also potentially require private property to be seized for a tunnel entrance, exit and ventilation areas.

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The highway has become a major issue in the race to replace de Blasio, a Democrat in his second term. Johnson, the council speaker, could embrace the tunnel idea as he runs for mayor next year.

Scott Stringer, the city’s comptroller who is running for mayor, proposed limiting part of the highway to trucks and converting another part into a 2-mile-long park.

Johnson and Stringer have both spoken about changing dependence on cars in the city — comments that have angered car owners.

“Let’s get people out of private cars,” Johnson said in a speech last year. “Let’s break the car culture.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .