The NYS Department of Transportation’s multi-year study of how to repair the triple-cantilever section of the BQE continues to creep forward. The next event is a public scoping meeting on June 22. Scoping meetings tend to be fairly technical. As such, they are very important to get right. The purpose of a scoping meeting at the start of a project study period is to ask questions like, What is the proper scope of the study? How far out should we look? Where should we draw the limit? What should we include and exclude? Everyone has a different answer to these questions, and those answers are often driven by self-interests.

We have at least three goals for setting the scope of the BQE study:

1. Atlantic Avenue

Expand the project area to include the southern entrances and exits to the BQE at Atlantic Avenue. We all know how treacherous it is to get on the BQE at Atlantic. See Werner Cohn’s BQE Watch blog for photos of accidents.

2. Protect our community

Make it clear that the use of residential streets (Court, Clinton, Henry, Hicks) as part of an alternate traffic plan during construction will not be acceptable. We don’t want the BQE diverted through Cobble Hill while the highway is being repaired. Imagine how awful that would be. They are going to have to put those 100,000 cars somewhere.

3. Sound attentuation

Whatever technology or structure is used to repair, rebuild, or replace the triple-cantilever portion of the BQE, i.e. the roadway under the Promenade and above the future Brooklyn Bridge Park, should be designed to reduce noise.

The construction will not begin for another ten years or so, but important decisions will be made now. It is important to defend our interests from day one.

WHAT: BQE public scoping meeting
WHEN: Monday, June 22, 2009 between 3 and 6 p.m. and also between 7 and 10 p.m.
WHERE: Dibner Building, Pfizer Auditorium, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, 5 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn 11201