Posted on 04/27/2021 11:27:06 AM PDT by Impala64ssa
n 1948, a scar running west to east began to appear across the center of The Bronx.
It was the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, one of the many ill-conceived works of Robert Moses, and it would leave an indelible mark on our borough. The highway, which would eventually become one of America’s most congested, tore communities in half. White neighborhoods and communities of color were affected, but the Black and Latino community bears the brunt of its legacy years later — with devastating health consequences.
It’s past time to rectify the mistake of Moses’s monstrosity.
Ed García Conde Ed García Conde How? By capping portions of the highway with parks, as has been done in other cities with similarly destructive roads, like Dallas, which capped part of the Woodall Rodgers Freeway.
For the past few years, momentum has been building from Bronx residents across the borough fighting for environmental justice, such as Nilka Martell of Loving The Bronx from Parkchester, one of many neighborhoods greatly harmed by the expressway.
Martell has been working with local elected officials on capping a small portion of the expressway in her neighborhood. Now, with President Biden’s infrastructure plan, many of us are daring to dream big.
By beginning to cap the Cross Bronx, we can begin to help clean up the air in vulnerable communities — with the added benefit of creating land that can be used for open green spaces and critically needed affordable housing.
Not only would we help restitch Bronx communities that Moses destroyed, we would also help alleviate our housing crisis and abysmal health rankings, because fewer toxic fumes from an expressway would yield cleaner air and trigger less asthma.
It’s literally a matter of life and death, as the COVID-19 pandemic showed.
With the Cross Bronx carrying more than 200,000 vehicles spewing toxic fumes and particles such as nitric oxide into the air each day, asthma rates in The Bronx are among the worst in the nation. When the pandemic hit, The Bronx, with its largely Black and Latino population, registered the highest death rate in the city and one of the highest in the nation: A respiratory-tract infection, the coronavirus makes people with pre-existing conditions such as asthma all that more vulnerable.
So when Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that racism is built into our country’s highways, it wasn’t hyperbole, because it is these very communities that have been suffering from the negative effects of environmental racism for more than half a century.
Covering up the expressway would allow the road operate while letting our borough carry on with a greener, cleaner future for all.
Imagine a day in the future when you can walk across a park instead of a highway spewing deadly pollutants.
It’s possible. We just need the political will and muscle to make it happen.
According to a study led by Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, in 2018, 2.4 miles of the expressway could be capped over by such “deck parks,” thus creating more green space.
“Deck parks can produce multiple health benefits. Most notably, they remove contact between pedestrians and automobiles. In doing so, they not only reduce [crashes], but they also encourage active, pollution-free transportation such as biking or jogging.” reports the 2018 study.
It goes on to indicate that “deck parks also place vehicles in a tunnel, thereby reducing noise and air pollution in surrounding neighborhoods. Finally, deck parks provide green space in which people can exercise and relax. In doing so, deck parks have the potential to reduce diabetes, heart disease, mental illness, cancer, low birth weight, and death associated with accidents.”
The study put a price tag of about $757 million, but the potential health benefits outweighing any upfront cost in the long term. Healthier people are less of a financial burden on our precarious health-care system.
In a borough where we have the highest rates of diabetes, asthma, obesity, and cardiovascular disease, we have a mandate to do right by our communities and those who not only live in them today but the generations that will call The Bronx home long after we’re all gone.
We deserve to live and breathe.
The moment to fix the Cross Bronx is now, while there is political will to spend our hard-earned tax dollars on one of the largest infrastructure proposals in our nation’s recent history.
bmp
Total waste of cash except to those who will be coming out large in the ensuing graft.
As far back as I can remember the CBE always looked like it was hit by a mortar attack. It’s why truckers driving between New England and the rest of the US use the Mario Cuo..OOPS I mean the new TAPPAN ZEE or the Newburgh Beacon Bridge (I 84). More miles, but lower tolls and a lot less aggravation.
“The Cross Bronx Expressway” is part of I-95.”
______
As is the Trans-Manhattan Expressway (.8 miles long).
This seems like a good idea. It will stich the neighborhood back together and turn an ugly place prettier. Some of the urban decay could gentrify as a result, although I don’t have much hope for the City of New York.
“I drove on the cross bronx expressway once. Once.
“There were two foot deep potholes every few hundred yards, big enough to KILL a normal passenger car. There could easily have been motorcyclist carcasses in them.
“New York City and suburbs are a shit hole country. I turn down jobs in Connecticut and on Long Island because I simply won’t drive through NYC. ($20 for a bridge toll? Nope.)”
_________
Tell us how you really feel, why don’t ya?
Sheesh!
Both of those are perfect examples of how each segment of a roadway needs to keep up with the other segments. They're also both perfect examples of how the Northeast in particular isn't going to benefit from any infrastructure upgrades because the roadway segments are so far out of date. No one is going to bulldoze the large swaths of land needed to bring those roadways up to 1960s standards, much less 2030s standards.
There are no shoulders on the George Washington Bridge nor the Cross-Bronx Expressway / I-95. The volume and flows of traffic require three separate parallel roadways with two sections flowing into Manhattan in the morning and switched in the afternoon so that two flow back out of Manhattan. They need full shoulders, break down lanes, and emergency vehicle lanes.
In addition to the three "local" sections, I-95 also needs completely separate lanes for through-traffic along the I-95 corridor from Maine to Florida. I-95 needs to bypass Manhattan completely with a loop running through the George Washington Bridge / Cross Bronx Expressway segment.
The Bronx is a dump that is too high above sea level and outside of tornado alley so it never gets a chance to flush.
“Tell us how you really feel, why don’t ya?
Sheesh!”
He says as he tells us how he really feels.
Guessing he is a shitholer.
For many, many decades we made the trip to CT upp the east coast, across GW to 87, and up 87 to 84 into CT...
Stopped that when we got too old to put up with all the traffic, tolls, and hassles...
For the past 25 years we take the route to Baltimore, up 83 to Harrisburg, up 81 to Scranton, and then all the way across 84 into CT...
An hour longer, but wonderful driving conditions and only one 1$ toll...
The wife likes it because of the two casinos in PA ... We hit one going up (Mohegan Sun Wilkes-Barre) ... The other coming back home (Penn National-Hollywood Casino Grantville)...
Sort of a 3.5 hour rest stop... I snooze in the car while the old lady gambles...
I view it as paying abut 300 to 400 hundred for “happy tolls” instead of 100 for those MD, DE, NJ, & NY “communist” tolls...
Also, arrive home relatively refreshed...
They should ‘Cap’ New York City In it’s entirety.
The Cross Bronx is one of the only roads that seem grid locked 24/7.
What was your first clue?
Yes, the Cross Bronx Expressway’s inherent traffic problems will not be solved at all by capping it, no matter what it is that capping it might otherwise do.
I have a more massive idea.
The Cross Bronx Expressway hosts two kinds of traffic.
It hosts a ton of Interstate traffic in both directions between northern New Jersey and Connecticut, a lot of which would just as soon avoid the Bronx altogether if it could. It hosts local traffic in the Bronx and between the Bronx and Manhattan and Queens. They would just as soon wish the long haul freight trucks had somewhere else to go.
My solution would be very expensive but I think toll fees could pay for the bonds used to borrow the money to build.
It would be a “Bronx Bypass Tunnel” between northern New Jersey and the eastern end of the Bronx.
Its entrances would be one:
One entrance/exit would be collecting I-95 traffic (and local traffic) adjacent to the I-95 section near Leonia. East bound traffic seeking to bypass the Bronx could enter there, and existing there would be mostly Interstate traffic that started east of the Bronx (like from Connecticut and New England).
The other entrance would be in the Pelham Bay area of the eastern end of the Bronx. That entrance would be near I-95 connections there, so it would collect Interstate traffic bypassing the Bronx heading west, and exiting the I-95 eastbound traffic that came out of New Jersey.
The current highway could become more of a local boulevard, and no more I-95, with most all truly Interstate traffic not needing it.
Yes, including entrance and exit local road surfaces the total distance would be about 17 miles, with probably 90% of that (about 15 miles) underground.
Yes it would mean a steep tunnel on the New Jersey side so that the tunnel would cross UNDER the Hudson River (as do the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels), and then tunneling uo under the Bronx to an exit in Pelham Bay area.
The Chunnel which is about twice the distance was built for 21 billion$.
I imagine the Bronx Bypass tunnel might cost as much in todays dollars.
But it would permanently solve the Cross Bronx traffic bottleneck problems and NYC could still go ahead and cap parts of the new local “Cross Bronx Boulevard”, and even improve the local exists and entrances from it.
But, hey, I am not the benevolent dictator (yet) so I guess it will never happen.
There was a plan proposed in the late 1940’s along those lines, running an expressway across the northern Bronx, from near where Co op City is to Riverdale, somewhat parallel to 233 St. That area wasn’t built up yet but building a bridge from that part of the Bronx would’ve been totally unfeasible because of the Palisades on the NJ side
Yes. I read about that plan.
I dreamed up the tunnel to (1) by pass the Bronx as much as possible, and (2) a tunnel need not have entrances and exits besides the terminal points, but even a raised highway could. The tunnel reinforces the idea that the main use of the tunnel is skip the Bronx, not get off anywhere in it. Long term wise there is less total ongoing maintenance with a tunnel, with weather providing a cause for more maintenance with bridges and uncovered highways.
My megalomaniac mind would also replace La Guardia completely, with a new airport also in the Pelham Bay area. No more Westchester county and Connecticut air travelers having to use the Whitestone bridge to get into Queens for flights from JFK or the current La Guardia.
Not everybody in NJ chooses to live in its armpit.
Is one guy being told something he doesn’t know? Asking for a friend...
One guy is certainly being an asshole.
Yeah. But that other guy...no walk in the park either. Good thing we both are neither.
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