It’s halfway open for business!
Drivers can finally cross the Belt Parkway’s long-awaited new Mill Basin Bridge. The Department of Transportation shifted all Brooklyn-bound traffic to the new drawbridge over the Mill Basin inlet on Aug. 30.
Queens-bound traffic will still head over the old span, but the opening of the new lane is finally a wheel in the right direction, because the long-delayed construction has caused major backups, especially when it rains, said the district manager of Community Board 18.
“We anxiously await the completion of this project, which has been the cause of extensive traffic congestion,” said Dottie Turano.
Commuters traveling along the Belt Parkway into Brooklyn, between Flatbush Avenue and the old bridge, will be rerouted onto the Queens-bound lanes of the new structure. The traffic shift will help contractors establish a work zone in order to begin the next stage of the reconstruction project, and three lanes of the eastbound roadway will remain in place, according to information from the Department of Transportation.
The construction is part of a $365-million federal- and city-funded project that began in 2009 to rebuild the seven bridges linking Brooklyn to Kennedy Airport. Construction had long been stalled, but work is supposed to wrap in January 2021, and the old bridge, which was erected in 1940, will come down.
All the way at the other end of Marine Park, near the tip of Gerritsen Beach, workers are hustling to complete the new Gerritsen Inlet Bridge. Construction for that span began in February 2013 and is expected to be finished in time for it to open on Labor Day, Sept. 4, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation.
Anyone can check the construction progress via the Department of Transportation’s Belt Parkway Facebook page: www.faceb
