Cuomo used the same excuse when he built the $1 billion Kosciuszko Bridge with three additional lanes of traffic, for what he claimed at the time would reduce congestion. “There are no current plans to widen the Long Island Expressway, but there is a project in the preliminary design phase to connect the entrance and exit ramps on the eastbound LIE via an auxiliary lane, less than a mile,” said state DOT spokeswoman Diane Park.īut Gov. State DOT reps told the board that the area is a “bottleneck” and the project is not considered a highway widening, but is just adding a supplemental roadway less than a mile long between two exit ramps.
Imagine burning over $10 million on this nonsense while the crumbles? #DeleteTheHighways The notion that asthmaway widenings relieve congestion is a big fat #LIE.Īfter all, the LIE at its widest point is 10 lanes and it's regularly jacked. “It strains credulity that at the very moment Albany is talking about cutting MTA service for Queens residents, Albany will also spend millions of dollars to ram a highway widening through a Queens community to benefit Long Islanders,” said Jacob.
CLEARVIEW EXPRESSWAY DRIVERS
“That effectively is a highway widening - we’re talking about removing the green space to widen out the highway,” said Queens resident and safe streets activist Joby Jacob.Ī rep for the state could not provide an estimate for the project’s price, but Jacob blasted it in its entirety, saying that spending any money on an alleged improvement for drivers at all is a slap in the face to public transit riders in Queens, as the MTA is facing a $16-billion deficit. Now, on the roughly one mile of roadway between the two exit ramps is some green space that follows the path of service road to its side, which DOT would replace with the new on-off lane. We know climate change is a dire threat to our generation, to future generations, and still embracing this is really a vision of Robert Moses 80 years ago, and it doesn’t work, it’s expensive and futile.” “Just wondering why state DOT is still pursuing this strategy.
“Freeway widenings, and this is a freeway widening, even if it is over a limited length of the LIE really have short-lived advantages just due to the fact, the law of induced demand,” said CB11 board member Ben Turner. State reps claim the work will alleviate congestion and make the area safer “by providing a longer distance for motorists to merge on and off the highway,” but members of the civic panel argue that it will do the exact opposite due to what’s called induced demand - a proven phenomenon that says creating more space for cars increases traffic rather than reducing it. State transportation honchos told Queens Community Board 11’s Transportation Committee last week that they plan to build a new “auxiliary lane” on the Long Island Expressway between the southbound Clearview Expressway and the Springfield Boulevard exit ramp. The state Department of Transportation wants to give more space to cars on a stretch of a Robert Moses-era highway in Queens - a 1950s-era idea that is merely a highway expansion, and will only attract more traffic, cause more crashes, and more pollution, Queens critics charge.
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