Transportation as Atrocity: A Brief Investigation

New York is overdue to make a decision on the future of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. So, which way, Gotham? Double down on the insanely bad ideas of the Robert Moses era, or chart a new course?

If you wan to get involved in decision-making about the future of the BQE, the new advocacy organization Off-Ramp NYC is a great place to plug in. Check them out here:

https://www.offramp.nyc/

And thanks to Liam Blank with Off-Ramp NYC for allowing use of several renderings of potential future visions of what the BQE could become. Check out more of Liam's work at: liamblank.com

Thanks so much to Adam Paul Susaneck (Segregation By Design across several platforms) for allowing me to use the great before and after animations. For a great deep dive on the history of the BQE, check out his new documentary, "The Story of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway," on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/ijvRD5ouDDY?si=qDgFFuN4p8vHYRlv

Patreon — a way to directly support my ability to talk about what I want to talk about every week, and get out to the cities I want to highlight. Much appreciation to all of you who are already patrons!

https://www.patreon.com/CityNerd

Resources:

• Los Angeles Times: L.A. keeps building near freeways, even though living there makes people sick, Barboza and Schleuss, https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-freeway-pollution/

• For a comprehensive reckoning of the harmful externalities of car dependence: The paper, "Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment" by Patrick Miner, Barbara M. Smith, Anant Jani, Geraldine McNeill, and Alfred Gathorne-Hardy. Available on the web under a Creative Commons license! Link here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267#bb0390

• NYCDOT BQE Central Project https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/bqecentral.shtml

• NYCDOT BQE Corridor Vision https://bqevision.com/

• https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/26/nyregion/brooklyn-queens-expressway-new-york-highway.html

• https://www.mta.info/project/interborough-express

• https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-paris-transformed-hidalgo/

Images, mostly mine as usual, BUT:

• Thumbnail: View southwest along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade section of the BQE, viewed from Brooklyn Bridge Park By Famartin - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149541639

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