Governor Kathy Hochul wants New York City to more aggressively reclaim its waterfront for public park space — and she thinks that the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn is precisely the place to start.
Hochul wants to demolish more than 2.2 miles of limited access highway that runs along the edge of New York Harbor, creating a barrier between the waterfront and the vibrant Bay Ridge neighborhood. That traffic would be accommodated with new access ramps from the I-278 to the eastbound Belt Parkway.
Hundreds of acres of land would be repurposed from asphalt lanes to grassy lawns, lush vegetation, and leafy green spaces — something of an urban paradise for families, children, joggers, and waterfront enthusiasts.
“The quality of life impacts to the neighborhood will be enormous,” one Hochul operative asserts. “This is how we build healthier, more livable communities.”
Hochul believes that cities should prioritize the quality of life of their neighborhoods, and believes that improved public access to the waterfront should be a major public priority.
“One of Kathy’s main longer-term objectives as Governor will be to undo some of the damage that was done by Robert Moses and other bureaucrats who severed much of the city from our waterfront by prioritizing automobiles at the expense of neighborhood residents,” he explains.
“Kathy follows the work of Richard Florida, who believes that the revolution in remote work will make cities a place where people move to connect and create, and perhaps not so much a place where people aspire to commute as-we-know it,” he explains. “That reinforces her belief that we should be building cities for people, not automobiles.”
The operative confirms that Hochul plans to make “historic” investments in New York City’s mass transit system — a massive modernization and expansion in the ballpark of $60 billion over ten years.
Coupled with congestion pricing, urban planners are confident that the roadway’s removal will not substantially impact traffic patterns.
