By: Hellen Zaboulani
Critics are slamming Corey Johnson, saying he wasted city funds in getting another engineering report to study possible solutions for the crumbling 1.5-mile stretch of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The 37-year-old Democrat who has served on the NY City Council since 2014, is now a NYC mayoral hopeful for 2021. As reported by the NY Post, some City Hall insiders and Brooklyn elected officials say the independent study was a politically motivated show, for Johnson to separate himself from Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The city council, led by Johnson, used $245,000 in taxpayer money to fund a 60-page report released by Arup last week. The international Urban design firm came to many of the same conclusions as the expert panel hired by de Blasio in April, in a previous independent study. The only “new” finding by Arup’s report was a suggestion to spend up to $11 billion to tear down part of the BQE and replace it with a 3-mile-long tunnel. Building a tunnel is something that was already mulled over in the past three decades, but that none of the council members support— not even Johnson.
“Instead of wasting everyone’s time and taxpayer dollars on a report that has many of the same findings as the mayor’s panel — except for a tunnel project no council member wants to endorse — the speaker and the City Council should have put politics aside and partnered with the panel,” one insider told the Post. “But that would’ve been a logical act of good government, and that’s hard to do when people are thinking about their political aspirations first and foremost.”
Another Brooklyn elected official called Arup’s study “unnecessary,” and pointed a finger at Johnson, alleging he was “politically motivated to put out his own plan to show independence from the mayor’s panel.”
The Robert-Moses-era highway, built more than 70-years-ago and traveled by more than 153,000 cars every day, is in dire condition. In 2018, the city transportation officials unveiled a plan to close the cherished Brooklyn Heights Promenade for six years and build a temporary highway above it until the BQE could be fixed. That project was adamantly opposed by residents in Brooklyn Heights and other nearby neighborhoods, and has since been abandoned. Being that the topic resulted in historically high voter turnout rates, both Johnson and Comptroller Scott Stringer, who is also running for mayor, were prompted to pursue fixes for the high profile BQE problem. For his part, Stringer’s office conducted an in-house study, released last March, which proposed limiting traffic to trucks, and converting part of the BQE into a park. Both Arup and Mayor de Blasio’s panel agreed that the city needs to make immediate, short-term fixes to the BQE, in the meantime before undertaking a permanent solution.
Johnson steadfastly defended the Council’s initiative to have its own report done, saying, “ultimately we are the ones who are approving this multi-billion dollar project, so it would be irresponsible of us not to have an independent, comprehensive analysis to delve into the competing plans.” “You can’t make a decision like this without all the facts, and this was the only way we could get them,” he added. Councilman Stephen Levin, who represents Brooklyn Heights, and Rachel Weinberger of the Regional Plan Association both defended Johnson and praised him for hiring Arup, saying the study was necessary.
