Why The I-278 Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in NEW YORK is FALLING APART And They Can't Fix It 

As someone who grew up in New York, people often have to be forced to do something here so unfortunately the collapse scenario appears to be what will be necessary to trigger the city to rebuild it.

A few years ago during the peak of rush hour on a Friday evening, a contractor's assistant decided to perform an experiment and get out of the van and walk along the side of the expressway from downtown Brooklyn to the Kosciuszko bridge, a nearly 3 mile distance. The assistant not only walked there faster, but had to wait nearly 45 minutes for the van to catch up to them! There are viable solutions to this repair but politics will continue to intervene until there is no choice but to undergo it. Perhaps it will see a solution beforehand.

I used to drive the BQE in the 1970s. I was taking night classes, and during the bad old 1970s, riding the subway that late at night was scary. I got to meet some "interesting" people on the subway, but I was always glad to get home in one piece. Yes, even at 11 pm, the BQE was a bottleneck.

I'm almost 50, and lived next to the BQE/I-278 all through my childhood. Crews have been repairing this road my entire life. I have never not seen it under construction or repair.

The BQE has a special place in my memory. My father decided to let me drive on the BQE as an introduction to expressway driving. It was a white knuckle ride but I survived.

As someone that grew up in Queens, this video hits the nail on the head. Just steer clear of the BQE if you can!!

It forever blows my mind how many sections of highways (anywhere, not just the ones shown in this video) don’t have a shoulder/breakdown lane. I can’t think of a worse situation to break down in than that type of area.

278 through staten island is a parking lot during daylight.

BQE used to be terrible at the old Kosciuszko bridge crossing between Brooklyn and Queens before it got replaced by 2 newer cable stayed bridge. Traffic still backs up at the bridge so I guess the old bridge wasn't as big a bottleneck as it was made to be. The cantilevered section at Brooklyn Heights is a whole another animal. I ended up spending an hour stuck there one time after the lane reduction.

The reduction from 3 lanes to 2 a couple of years ago has had a permanent effect of making that section of the BQE permanently slow. Before that, it was possible to sometimes zip through the BQE during off hours. Now that is never possible. And since there is no good alternative for trucks, this will have to be addressed somehow. I'd hate to wait for a collapse because it may take longer than people expect and the quality of life has seriously degraded. I used to visit the Bronx from lower Brooklyn each weekend, and the alternative would be to pay a toll and use the Battery Tunnel to go into Manhattan and take the FDR drive into the Bronx. But for many people that's a burdensome extra expense. By subway, that trip takes close to 2 hours, so if I couldn't drive, I wouldn't have gone. On the best of days that trip would take about 45 minutes with light traffic, and those days are gone.

The BQE has always been a mess. The section underneath the promenade literally bounces with the traffic.

As a Philly suburbanite, my favorite alternative route to I-95/278 through NYC is taking US 202 up to I 287 in Somerville NJ. There’s a lot of relatively speedy bypasses in that corridor even if it’s not traffic light free, and on a bad day for NYC it can even bee the faster option. It’s admittedly not practical for every trip since I 287 mostly bypasses the city, but when it’s practical it’s a lot more pleasant to drive than the turnpike. Besides, New Hope-Lambertville is a lovely detour through two very beautiful towns.

The thing people have to remember about NYC is that it's big, dense, geographically diverse, and really really old. Getting *anything* done is hard. Not to mention it also gets punishing winters. I'm not surprised that they've struggled to find a solution to their highway problems. If you ask me, a good place to start would be requiring all thru traffic going from the Mid Atlantic to New England and vice versa to use I-287.

Thanks to the history of Moses vs locals, NYC has all its messed up highways. About this one section, I have also heard of a plan for a tunnel under the neighborhood to replace the decks.

Finally a video that talks about the crappy BQE in NYC. All these years there was nothing on the media about the BQE, absolutely none. Thank you for this video. Entrance to the "wall" towards Manhattan is the hell. Multiple lanes and entrances merge into two lanes. No solution no nothing.

Fascinating. One of the unspoken problems is that NYC is far older than most other cities with big expressway systems, and it's just not feasible to retrofit a multi-lane system into our 350-year-old city. Houston's population in 1950 was 600K; LA in 1950 was 2M. Both cities had vast undeveloped spaces, unlike NYC, so it was much easier to build expressway systems there.

My take away from this is: the BQE will unfortunately eventually collapse

The Knicks will win a Championship before the NYS DOT fixes 278. Im a Knicks fan and it hurt to say that but its true

There is no easy solution but I'd have to say more than likely they are gonna wait until it collapses before anything is done to correct it hopefully nobody is hurt or killed if there is a catastrophic event

8:49 People need to stop saying that critical interstate infrastructure should be replaced with bike and walking friendly boulevards that always have sunshine and rainbows. Because the real world doesn't work like that. And like you said if it wasn't critical to the economy of the city, like the Embarcadero Freeway or the West Side Highway, it wouldn't be a problem. However, ideas like this and a similar one when it comes to discussing the traffic of I-35 in Austin, it's just a terrible idea through and through. We. Need. Roads.

As a child I remember my father driving on BQE and seeing it under construction and now as a adult almost in My 40s that highway is still a disaster...I always avoided the BQE like a plague 😂 your explanation and analysis is dead on

I live on Long Island. People forget that there are almost 3 million of us that are stuck using this congested and crumbling infrastructure when we want to leave and have goods delivered. Cuomo was supposed to build a bridge / tunnel to the Connecticut (instead of ferries). I welcomed that. Bridge / tunnel from William Floyd Parkway to I-95/91 would be the most logical at this long.

I get that BQE may be a critical route for freight. So dedicate it to freight only. Get rid of the private automobiles clogging up the limited lanes.

The BQE is an important artery to NYC - however, I would support the idea of commercial only traffic during certain hours. Perhaps even make it tolled for private vehicles.

At the start of the video the differences between the interstate and the parkway system were briefly mentioned, and the deficiencies of the parkway system were brought up. The reason for this is very interesting. Basically the interstate and the parkways were designed for 2 completely different purposes. The interstate was a postwar creation designed to be a utilitarian system to move both freight and passenger traffic from point a to point b as efficiently as possible. On the other hand, the parkways were created in the 1920’s and designed specifically to move pleasure motorist on day trips from the crowded city to what was then rural areas for recreation. Infact; The very term parkway has 2 meanings linked to this intended use. Firstly, all these roads were designed to terminate at state parks, which was the intended destination of the traffic. Secondly, the roads themselves were said to be designed as an extension of the park and were therefore built for slower leisure driving, incorporating many turns, lush green medians, and other features intended to beautify the road rather than make it as efficient as possible. As the postwar years saw massive suburban expansion into these formerly rural areas, and the parkway’s usage changed from pleasure driving to utilitarian driving, these features meant to beautify the roadway became a hindrance to its new usage. There have been some projects undertaken to widen lanes and eliminate curves on these highways, but there is only so much that can be done for roads that were designed for a completely different purpose. Mileage Mike, if you have not already done a video on New York’s parkways, please consider it as a future topic as it would make a fantastic series.

As a kid, my parents crossed the GWB on trips to Westchester County so I wanted an alternate and just looking at a map I was dumb enough to think that I-278 may be a good option. At least that moment makes me glad that I have clinched it.

The view of Manhattan from the old Kosciusko Bridge was always inspiring.

I have memories of driving on the BQE when I last lived in NYC some 45 years ago, and visited there up to 15 years ago. Traffic then was heavy, but acceptable, actual speeds often got up to 50 mph (the speed limit) or a bit higher in places. (Never drove the BQE in rush hour). Slow spots were the access ramps to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and the exchange with the Gowanus expressway and the Brooklyn Battery tunnel. It's taken a while for things to get this bad.

I drove the BQE every day for about 10 years when I owned a retail store in Manhattan. In that situation, it's not really tenable to take public transit because I'd often be bringing shipments or supplies in to the store myself, and even on days I wasn't, I couldn't risk being made late because of some random delay on the LIRR (BQE delays were more or less predictable; LIRR delays were not). I didn't drive on the promenade section of the road but the one thing you didn't mention was the Kosciuszko Bridge, which used to be a major backup every single day. They replaced that with an all-new bridge a few years ago and it more or less fixed that problem. It was generally smooth in both directions after that. Andrew Cuomo pushed that through. I don't see any of the current leaders of the city or state being able to do the same with the Brooklyn Heights promenade section. They just don't have the same gumption.

Thank you for accurately describing and showing the disaster that is the BQE. My poor sister has to commute on this road every weekday.

The main challenge for the traffic is the constant switching from 2 lane, to 3 lane, then back to 2 lane then back to 3 lane again (on the northbound section). If they just kept it as a 2-lane road all the way through the dangerous section, it would keep the traffic flowing.

The BQE is the worst, there’s always really bad traffic on there, plus it’s in absolutely horrible condition. Cross Bronx Expressway, Belt Parkway, and Cross Island Parkway are bad too, always heavy traffic on those. Excellent video as always!

I-78 was planned to routed beyond the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens and end at JFK Airport by Robert Moses, but this was scrapped due to local opposistion.

As a Brooklyn native who had the displeasure of driving on the BQE my entire adult life I think that they should level it and rebuild it

Yo, loved this video, I am born and raised in New York but been living in texas for the last 30 years, the video bought back alot of good memories been on all those roads over and over. Thanks for the video

I love your voice so calming ❤️

Great video MIke

Very impressive analysis....especially after a first visit to the area!...

as a former NY'er (a quarter of a century) you talking up NYC got a chuckle out of me. Even now that I could afford to live there I woulsnt go back

My daughter graduated from NYU in 2022, so I am happy to say that I will never again have to visit the hell-hole that is New York City. I always laugh when I see films and TV shows made in NYC, because they never show the giant mounds of trash bags, which are omnipresent throughout Manhattan. Trash removal expenses must be a huge component of production costs for anybody filming in NYC. It boggles the mind that people will pay $4,000 for a tiny one-bedroom unit, when there is a constant pile of stinky trash bags right outside your door. This is all part of the overburdened infrastructure system. With all streets and highways functioning at full capacity, the city is already overwhelmed. How can they ever close a major highway for a few years for repairs or upgrades?

As a lifelong New Yorker and someone that drives on the BQE and Van Wyck every single day I can safely say that the Van Wyck is a million times worse than the BQE when it comes to traffic. The ratio is correct.

all i do is sit in traffic on this highway and then this video comes up on my homepage to remind me of the time ive lost on the forsaken bqe. and i watched it because what's 15 more minutes. great video mileage mike !

Commercial goods in Europe are also transported mostly by roads (trains are mostly used to transport bulk materials) and somehow Europe doesn't need highways through cities.

Very well made video!

Another excellent video.

Excellent video!!!! A+++++.

Hopefully they can do something about interstate 278 in NYC

Great vid..i take the bqe home everyday ..williamsburg bridge to bqe..to grandcentral pkwy....lower manhattan to northern queens...on mondays 40min...fridays a easy hour and a half commute

As a native, I-278 Exit 31 to Williamsburg St W & Flushing Av is always backed up. Even when I’m on the school bus it’s backed up. I recommend skip exit 31 and go to exit 29.

Nice to see the Belt Parking lot get some love.

When driving under the Brooklyn Bridge access road it was always just two lanes. So it was three lanes like a normal road but then reduced to two as if a tractor trailer was broken down in one. The Atlantic Ave, exit is five miles from the Long Island Expressway, I would allow at least 45 minutes to make that trip, it often took an hour. I would get up at 4:30 to beat the traffic, leave a sleepy neighborhood in Carroll Gardens and jump onto the BQE. It was like being dropped into the middle of the pack at the Indianapolis 500. All kinds of trucks cars tractor trailers booming down the road as if they were escaping a nuclear bomb. The BQE is New York City, people are in hurry.

Mike totally gets it! He doesn’t even live here and he already knows how the politics involved will make this an almost impossible fix. I use this highway almost every weekend and it’s still full of traffic at 9am😭, but like he said the most likely scenario is that nothing will get done because of budget arguments and politics… and this will either collapse or something extreme would have to happen for NYC to actually rebuild this correctly

Drove thru it since the person I was staying with lived in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and we were returning from Flushing... Subway is still fundamentally a hub-and-spoke system (the G line doesn't extend far enough in its current alignment)

Also New York looking at Boston's Big Dig probably discourages them from burying the BQE. If the Subway connected to the Staten island Railroad, it might make the 4 lanes passible but it probably would only move people who use a shuttle connection to the higher capacity train that might not be any more frequent that the service as is

The algorithm led me to this video. And having grown up in the BX now living in Jersey. Def gon give these a watch. 78 is gross but gives you some of the best views of Manhattan from both Jersey and Brooklyn

You've discussed Cross Bx and the BQE, now you got to enjoy the Van Wyck Expressway that has had daily construction on it since 1979

I managed to "volunteer" to drive a 26' moving van to our Brooklyn branch from North Carolina. I came into the BQE on a Friday morning....it took me an hour to move less than 5 miles.

You came to New York to see infrastructure? I love your channel already

Being British and watching this I'll never complain about our motorway network again

It's almost as though it's a city built more for people than cars and that it's working perfectly fine in that regard 🤔 Pretty fucked they're just letting the road collapse though. Just shut it down and turn it into something useful like another transit line, walkable park, bike path, etc.

I remember traveling on the BQE back in the day when I was visiting family in Connecticut from Toronto. It was the return trip; traveling through the main bus terminal in NYC and heading northwards back into Canada. The POTHOLES, omg. The three layer portion was pretty cool though, coming from a Canadian.

Love your work!! Please find out why the Manhattan bridge has been under some kind of construction constantly for the minimum of the last 10 years. 😂

Looking at your video I get flashbacks. Still in NYC but I don’t travel it everyday but 43 of it is enough!

An obvious temporary (though minimal) measure would be to allow truck traffic on the Belt between the Verrazzano and Bay Parkway. But I can imagine the howling that would ensue if that were proposed!

As someone who first saw the derelict West Side Express Highway after it had collapsed and keeping up with the City and the State's plans to replace it and finally settling on a surface artery, I know what's going to happen. Action will be delayed by environmental reviews, constant public meetings, and even NIMBYs tying things up in court, that the cantilever structure will collapse and then there will be endless squabbles on what to do about it, and finally the City will settle for a surface artery, again. This means 278 will be severed, and will have to be renumbered as two odd-prefix x95 routes.

Can you do a video on all of the NYC bridges and tunnels sometime? I’d be very interested to know more about them.

The ground level boulevard in place of an old elevated highway in a large city recalls the long-ongoing debate about what to do with Toronto's Gardiner Expressway...

Mike, I (from Raleigh) was up in BK for a wedding, driving around with my parents to bring a bunch of stuff to a hotel for the whole wedding party, and the BQE was terrible. It would've been faster to WALK, forget a scooter, but that wasn't an option unfortunately. You could see problems form in real time that would dissipate in seconds in less densely populated cities, but in NYC a problem created by one person's momentary anti-social behavior can rapidly scale up to the point that it affects thousands of people. On the way into the city on one of the Hackensack bridges it took about 30 minutes to go half a mile; when we got to the point of congestion, it was just a light rear end collision, but the lady with a BBL (which was itself probably a cause of rubbernecking as she stood around talking on the phone) didn't bother to move her BMW into the shoulder.

Great video. As a former New Yorker from Long Island, I have driven on the BQE on a few occasions (thankfully). Last June I was up in New York on vacation, and made the mistake of going to the BQE (Huge traffic that day getting off the Verrazzano Bridge to the Belt Parkway, which was also jammed. I finally gave up, and got off at Atlantic Avenue and took it to Pennsylvania Avenue to the Jackie Robinson Parkway (formerly the Interboro Parkway) to the Grand Central Parkway.

Drove this to go to a Mets game yesterday. It took 2 hours to go 11 miles. Unbelievable!

I used to work for a restaurant with an outpost in the Rockaways. I would have to drive to the restaurant via the BQE, pick up food, and drive to the outpost via the Belt Parkway. It was brutal. The BQE is definitely the worst interstate in NYC, but not the worst highway. That honor goes to the FDR, which was appropriately named after our least mobile president.

My girlfriend didn't read the title so during your introduction, she was going, "BQE! BQE! BQE!" I use it a lot to go to her place from New Jersey where it meet Prospect Expressway. Hate BQE and Staten Island Expressway, which I'd say has the worst drivers. Love your videos.

Have not lived in the NY metro since 1992. Used to sit in traffic as a young kid on the BQE. My father used the BELT instead, but that got backed up too, and that was in the 70s and early 80s. I can only imagine how bad it is now, sans most of 2020. 278 started in western Staten Island and it was no worse than central NJ traffic in the mid to late 80s when I drove it. It got horrible upon approaching the Verrazano toll, and thereafter.

Grew up in Brooklyn and now live in Queens, so I know that road and the area that’s falling apart very well. Mother still lives in Brooklyn so to visit mom the BQE is the best of all the not so good ways. Interconnectivity between Brooklyn and Queens has been terrible for years. And with traffic explosion it is unbearable. Lucky that to get to mom I get off the BQE way before the tiered section, but if that area wasn’t such a shit show I would be faster to shoot over that and jump on the prospect park expressway. So New York and Brooklyn officials please get it together. Thank you for visiting my Ted Talk.

I'm always afraid it's gonna collapse when I'm driving on it.

I have been driving on 278 and GWB in one day and it's quite the patience test.

The BQE! A nightmare trying to head back to Boston on a Sunday

I worked for the DOT for a short time in Brooklyn. I had to use the BQE and Gowanus daily. One day, while working at the Hamilton Ave asphalt plant. The 'big' boss told me that the City has plans to dig up 4th Ave and put a thru tunnel under it. Then, they would rebuild 4th Ave for local traffic and tear down the Gowanus permanently. Drivers would be given a choice. Take the tunnel straight through Bklyn or take 4th Ave local streets. Since that was 20 years ago. I guess that plan is out the window. Lol

Love the BKE, growing up my dad always said it was driving on "hard mode" and that's the truth.

Recentl, a painful reminder occured on I 95 in Philadelphia with a fuel truck fire causing a collapse of an overpass in NE Philadelphia. The highway is shutdown in both direction for a significant distance and creating a traffic nightmare on 95 for local and transcity commuting. This is going to to create a similar situation if the BQE is allowed to continue to disintegrate at the currant pace. Bite the bullet and get it fixed or replaced.

I love the bqe, traffic can be terrible, no shoulder for disabled vehicles in many of the high usage sections, but still the best driving experience I've ever had was driving on the BQE at 5:30am on a weekend as the sun came up with almost no traffic (one of the only times I've driven it without traffic).

Around the late 80's when I got my drivers license to the mid 90's after 11 pm during the week the Cross Bronx was a cemetery hardly no traffic around. The same with The BQE,East River Drive, LIE. In 25 minutes from GWB to Brooklyn bridge. Now traffic is like that 24 hours a day.

Welp I know what is on my bucket list... go thru that road.

I grew up in queens and regularly take the BQE. The traffic is truly horrific

So I know the 'official' name is now the "Hugh L Carey Tunnel" but it will never be anything other than the Battery tunnel (or Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel) to locals. NY had an epidemic of renaming crossings in the past decade-plus. Similarly the 59th St / Queensboro Bridge is never seriously called the "Ed Koch Bridge" and the calling the Triboro the "RFK Bridge" is only catching on a bit.

I used to ride this with my Dad countless times growing up. This is sad to see, but proves again that Man doesn't have the answers.

Remove entirely, dig a 4 lane truck route tunnel, put a cap and a boulevard on top, add some BRT on top, car drivers don't need every little tantrum served

Im a civil engineer for traffic planning and road construction and my opinion on american highways is: If there was a better education in driving and behaving in a car, many many traffic and congestion problems would be fixed instantly. Nobody is talking about that quiet obvious point. If you have good rules and people who can follow the rules, highways dont start to congest with 40, 50% of their capacity in use. With bad/missing rules and bad drivers, you can even kill the traffic flow on empty roads!

At the height of COVID the BQE was empty during morning and evening rush, holidays and weekends. No trucks, cars, airplanes , no traffic and NO noise. Since i worked outside the house, It was beautiful and pleasant. I miss the COVID traffic. Those individuals that stayed home missed a on e in a liftime experience.

brooklynite POV : NYC is so infatuated with narrowing streets and making bike lanes (which is a good thing) , truck traffic and the flow of it is of the least importance to the powers that be , remember that when supply chain issues get disrupted because delivery can't move smoothly only those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder will feel the pinch the most ! NIMBYISM is a big thing , and residents of Brooklyn heights have enough money to fight the rebuild , don't rule out the highway being rerouted somewhere else entirely many more reasons why this road won't be fixed properly till it completely collapses great vid

As far as Big Digging the BQE goes, a quick look at any map of the NYC subway will show you why that is going to be a nightmare just to get off the drawing board, much less get approved. Hell, the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, which for those who don't know, connects the Cross Bronx Expressway to the George Washington Bridge, is partially buried underneath apartment complexes and a bus terminal, and a few of the supports also show signs of potentially falling apart. So now you have two crosstown full routes that handle more traffic than possibly any other road in North America (maybe apart from Ontario's 401) that are facing wear and tear issues that the city ignores. Simply put, you'll have to keep these highways elevated and take notes from Tokyo's networks because that's probably the closest counterpart to NYC aside from the fact that I doubt Tokyo has winters as rough as the city does.

Simply Big Dig the BQE. Make everybody happy!

Uhhhhhh pretty troubling to compare "what about LA? What about Houston and Dallas?" Those cities all have horrifying traffic and disastrous approaches to managing it. All of those cities involve far more sprawl, far more surface area than NY, but less transit and fewer options for non-car use and so have even worse scenarios for commuting or moving at all. Those are the exact places you DON'T want to replicate. Turning NYC into Houston is... frankly just a kind of insane thing to say.

I prefer a rental car if to drive through NYC. I have lets say a phobia of breaking down in a tunnel or backing traffic up for a mile.

I would love to see how the BQE compares to the DVP in toronto

The NYC bypass traffic is going to have to reroute to I-287 and Garden State Parkway in NJ, which are already strained by heavy traffic due to commuters.

I work in downtown Brooklyn by the Heights. I frequently go to the Promenade, which is above the BQE. This is during lunch hour. The BQE is always gridlocked. I would avoid ALL car travel in NYC if possible.

0:41 Third Street bridge in Gowanus. This picture is about 1+ years old as the view north is now much different.

when these roads were built, the trucks were smaller, there was less people, and the drivers were different. i have driven the bqe many , many times and thought to my self that in a alternate universe they had forethought and started the new york accessibility program to improve roads etc.

The BQE is unavoidable if you live in Brooklyn. It's a nightmare and some people refuse to drive on it because it's elevated without a shoulder.