So Is the BQE Going to Collapse?

A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines. [Curbed]( TUESDAY, JULY 11 GETTING AROUND [So Is the BQE Going to Collapse?]( Talking to the former chief engineer of the DOT about highway nightmare scenarios and the long, long road to a real fix. Photo: Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock The most reassuring thing Sam Schwartz, the city’s former traffic commissioner and once chief engineer of the Department of Transportation, can say about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is that it isn’t going to collapse in the way you think it might. “So the image people have of the highway falling to the ground is very unlikely,” he tells me. But the most distressed stretch — the triple cantilever that runs from Sands Street to Atlantic Avenue — is crumbling, which raises all kinds of other unhappy scenarios. A [report]( by a panel of experts under Bill de Blasio found that overweight trucks and the cantilever’s deterioration could make that section of the BQE “unsafe and unable to carry existing levels of traffic within five years.” That was three years ago. [Continue reading »]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( The Latest [How to Collect Furniture Like Dennis Freedman “Function is not necessarily the point.”]( By Wendy Goodman [Yu & Me Books, After the Fire The Chinatown shop needs a gut renovation, but more than $320,000 in donations will keep the business afloat and staff paid.]( By Wilfred Chan [How Barbiecore Ate Pink A trend dreamed up by publicists and forced into our homes.]( By Mia Mercado [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Read More From Curbed]( Introducing The City Desk, a weekly newsletter about New York. [Sign up to get it every Thursday](. [GET THE NEWSLETTER]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe]( | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved