Traffic moves on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Getty Images North AmericaNYC Grapples With a Weighty Dilemma: What To Do About Trucks
Heavy tractor trailers strain highway bridges and deliver noise and pollution to urban communities. But cities like New York also depend on trucking.
Since the late 2010s, it’s been clear that the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a key arterial for freight and car traffic in New York City, is in danger of collapsing. Chunks of concrete have been crumbling off the “triple cantilever” — a 1.5-mile-long three-level pile-up of highway decks in Brooklyn conjured up by infamous city planner Robert Moses in 1948.
A study in 2019 fingered a culprit: huge tractor-trailers and heavy trucks. About 13,000 freight vehicles rumble into New York City on the BQE every day. A tenth of them are 18-wheelers weighing more than 40 tons — some, almost double that. That’s far heavier than the mid-century vehicles it was designed for.