Why The I-278 Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in NEW YORK is FALLING APART And They Can't Fix It

As someone who grew up in New York, people often have to be forced to do something here so unfortunately the collapse scenario appears to be what will be necessary to trigger the city to rebuild it.

A few years ago during the peak of rush hour on a Friday evening, a contractor's assistant decided to perform an experiment and get out of the van and walk along the side of the expressway from downtown Brooklyn to the Kosciuszko bridge, a nearly 3 mile distance. The assistant not only walked there faster, but had to wait nearly 45 minutes for the van to catch up to them! There are viable solutions to this repair but politics will continue to intervene until there is no choice but to undergo it. Perhaps it will see a solution beforehand.

I'm almost 50, and lived next to the BQE/I-278 all through my childhood. Crews have been repairing this road my entire life. I have never not seen it under construction or repair.

I used to drive the BQE in the 1970s. I was taking night classes, and during the bad old 1970s, riding the subway that late at night was scary. I got to meet some "interesting" people on the subway, but I was always glad to get home in one piece. Yes, even at 11 pm, the BQE was a bottleneck.

As someone that grew up in Queens, this video hits the nail on the head. Just steer clear of the BQE if you can!!

It forever blows my mind how many sections of highways (anywhere, not just the ones shown in this video) don’t have a shoulder/breakdown lane. I can’t think of a worse situation to break down in than that type of area.

BQE used to be terrible at the old Kosciuszko bridge crossing between Brooklyn and Queens before it got replaced by 2 newer cable stayed bridge. Traffic still backs up at the bridge so I guess the old bridge wasn't as big a bottleneck as it was made to be. The cantilevered section at Brooklyn Heights is a whole another animal. I ended up spending an hour stuck there one time after the lane reduction.

278 through staten island is a parking lot during daylight.

The BQE has a special place in my memory. My father decided to let me drive on the BQE as an introduction to expressway driving. It was a white knuckle ride but I survived.

The thing people have to remember about NYC is that it's big, dense, geographically diverse, and really really old. Getting anything done is hard. Not to mention it also gets punishing winters. I'm not surprised that they've struggled to find a solution to their highway problems. If you ask me, a good place to start would be requiring all thru traffic going from the Mid Atlantic to New England and vice versa to use I-287.

The reduction from 3 lanes to 2 a couple of years ago has had a permanent effect of making that section of the BQE permanently slow. Before that, it was possible to sometimes zip through the BQE during off hours. Now that is never possible. And since there is no good alternative for trucks, this will have to be addressed somehow. I'd hate to wait for a collapse because it may take longer than people expect and the quality of life has seriously degraded. I used to visit the Bronx from lower Brooklyn each weekend, and the alternative would be to pay a toll and use the Battery Tunnel to go into Manhattan and take the FDR drive into the Bronx. But for many people that's a burdensome extra expense. By subway, that trip takes close to 2 hours, so if I couldn't drive, I wouldn't have gone. On the best of days that trip would take about 45 minutes with light traffic, and those days are gone.

As a Philly suburbanite, my favorite alternative route to I-95/278 through NYC is taking US 202 up to I 287 in Somerville NJ. There’s a lot of relatively speedy bypasses in that corridor even if it’s not traffic light free, and on a bad day for NYC it can even bee the faster option. It’s admittedly not practical for every trip since I 287 mostly bypasses the city, but when it’s practical it’s a lot more pleasant to drive than the turnpike. Besides, New Hope—Lambertville is a lovely detour through two very beautiful towns.

Fascinating. One of the unspoken problems is that NYC is far older than most other cities with big expressway systems, and it's just not feasible to retrofit a multi-lane system into our 350-year-old city. Houston's population in 1950 was 600K; LA in 1950 was 2M. Both cities had vast undeveloped spaces, unlike NYC, so it was much easier to build expressway systems there.

The BQE has always been a mess. The section underneath the promenade literally bounces with the traffic.

Thanks to the history of Moses vs locals, NYC has all its messed up highways. About this one section, I have also heard of a plan for a tunnel under the neighborhood to replace the decks.

Finally a video that talks about the crappy BQE in NYC. All these years there was nothing on the media about the BQE, absolutely none. Thank you for this video. Entrance to the "wall" towards Manhattan is the hell. Multiple lanes and entrances merge into two lanes. No solution no nothing.

8:49 People need to stop saying that critical interstate infrastructure should be replaced with bike and walking friendly boulevards that always have sunshine and rainbows. Because the real world doesn't work like that. And like you said if it wasn't critical to the economy of the city, like the Embarcadero Freeway or the West Side Highway, it wouldn't be a problem. However, ideas like this and a similar one when it comes to discussing the traffic of I-35 in Austin, it's just a terrible idea through and through. We. Need. Roads.

My take away from this is: the BQE will unfortunately eventually collapse

There is no easy solution but I'd have to say more than likely they are gonna wait until it collapses before anything is done to correct it hopefully nobody is hurt or killed if there is a catastrophic event

The Knicks will win a Championship before the NYS DOT fixes 278. Im a Knicks fan and it hurt to say that but its true