Wednesday night’s public meeting on the long-awaited repairs to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway’s tower of terror in Brooklyn Heights was so jam-packed with information that we couldn’t fit everything into three articles. Here’s everything else you need to know about the makeover of Brooklyn’s crappiest roadway:
• Mayor DeBlasio’s planned streetcar system will definitely not run along Furman Street, according to Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg. The city is in the process of conducting community meetings it claims will play an important role in mapping out the trolley’s eventual route before construction gets underway in 2019, but the transit czar assured residents the street below the elevated highway bridge is off the table.
• The city does not plan to seize any land to use as a so-called staging site — a place to store construction equipment and assemble parts, according to Bridges Deputy Commissioner Bob Collyer. In fact, it won’t necessarily need to place it nearby — it could instead use a site in nearby nabes such as Red Hook or Sunset Park or as far away as New Jersey, a senior official said.
Locals had a cheeky suggestion, though — delay construction of the controversial towers at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park and use that.
The transportation reps said they will run the idea by park honchos, though a city spokesman later told this paper it wouldn’t consider the idea.
• Brooklyn Heights residents suffering from the indefinite closure of the Squibb Park Bridge — the bouncy path from Columbia Heights to Brooklyn Bridge Park that has been out of action for more than a year, and will remain so for years to come — could get an alternative way to get to the waterfront.
Several residents suggested building a new stairway down from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to the park, and transportation department outreach coordinator Joannene Kidder said the city would “absolutely take a look at” the possibility.
• The asphalt on the highway’s Staten Island-bound travel lane is caving in, and the transportation department plans to fix it by stripping the tar and repaving the thoroughfare this summer, according to officials.
