Phase 2 Of BQE Repair Project Begins
By Thomas Cogan

Phase 2 of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway repair project, entailing repairs on the roadway from 61st Street to Broadway, has begun and is expected to last until December 2008. Last week, the first of what will be many meetings took place at the White Castle field office on 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights. At the meeting, officials from the New York state Department of Transportation and the construction companies attempted to inform the public of the project’s progress and plans. Such meetings generated friction during Phase 1 (Broadway to 25th Avenue), a project that lasted more than three years from 2001 to 2004; at last week’s meeting, friction was back.

NYSDOT’s aim, Chief Engineer Craig Ruyle told the audience, is to improve highway safety, replace several bridges, keep property disruption minimal and, of course, stay within budget. One striking phase of highway improvement involves the entrance ramp between the BQE and Roosevelt Avenue. It has been closed, and soon the eastbound BQE (for traffic headed in the general direction of Flushing Bay) will be detoured to the right, to an unused part of the CSX railroad bed while the current roadway is redesigned. At the same time, the single track of the CSX freight line will have to be moved over slightly; similar to the way it had to be relocated in Phase 1, when a new railroad overpass was built above 35th Avenue. There are overpasses that must be demolished and replaced (41st Avenue and 70th Street, to name two), and then the Queens Boulevard overpass and entrance ramp superstructure will be rebuilt. This achievement is to be done in five phases, designed to allow continuous flow of heavy automobile traffic without significant interruption. The Roosevelt Avenue Bridge over the BQE will also be altered, which of course means that the No. 7 Flushing Line train trestle on top of it will need an engineer’s touch. At the outset, NYSDOT is delayed by two things: a Teamsters strike, which is preventing delivery of certain materials, and pre-construction inspections of surrounding houses.

The audience asked many of the same questions the Phase 1 audiences asked, particularly about what work is to be done during the day and what at night. Ruyle told his listeners that most of the demolition work, which would be work on the concrete superstructures of the bridges, would be done in daylight hours, but the steel skeletons must be removed at night. The steel that is removed will be carried away on the main highway, he assured one woman who was worried it would be transported through the local streets.

In large part, those streets would be in Woodside. Where Phase 1 involved Jackson Heights and Community Board 3, Phase 2 involves Community Board 2, which, comparatively, seems ready to be far more active in the matter. Already a few Board 2 members have quickly become familiar to the NYSDOT people and their associates. At the meeting, District Manager Dolores Rizzotto was disturbed that the sound barriers that have been erected in several places along the highway are not to be put up near Nathan Weidenbaum Park on Laurel Hill Boulevard at 64th Street, at about the point where Phase 2 begins. Those in judgment of where these baffles should be installed and where left out have decided that putting them across the street from the park is unnecessary, despite local requests to have them. Rizzotto noted that one neighborhood in the Phase 1 area turned down a proposal to put barriers up, believing they would block sunlight during long periods in the daytime; she said that Weidenbaum Park, which is principally a children’s playground, would be glad to take what others rejected. Bruce Ogurek, an area supervisor for NYSDOT, told her that it’s not as simple as that; such swapping is bureaucratically forbidden. But the request can be passed along for reconsideration. “The people you’re looking at can’t help you,” he said, referring to himself and the others in the room, but they can bring information to those who can. Marilyn Elserode, head of the Bosrd 2 transportation committee, said she would like to see somebody from the project at one of her committee meetings. Ogurek assured her that a design and planning representative would be available, though they couldn’t settle on a definite date.

The traffic situation is called critical even as the project begins. That was all too likely, but during Phase 2 it directly involves Rescue 4/Engine 292, the firehouse at 64-18 Queens Blvd., which must answer calls amid increased congestion. One inquirer in the audience said that the situation at the Broadway-37th Avenue junction, confusing for pedestrians in the best of times (involving as it does not only those roads but also 69th and 70th Streets and an entrance ramp to the westward BQE route) has become outrageous now that, for construction purposes, barriers have been set up that must send pedestrians and drivers into a maze. Police Department traffic officers were denounced as being present but doing little or nothing at this site and others.

Property owners had a list of grievances; for instance, on woman said that she had to yield some of her land to NYSDOT so a construction wall could be built. This slice of property would be returned to her when the project was completed, she was told; she was skeptical. The impact of construction, and construction equipment, on householders is bound to lead to much contention in meetings to come.