Bushwick Expressway

The **Bushwick Expressway** is a cancelled highway project that would've brought the I-78 to Brooklyn via the Williamsburg Bridge.

## Description on Bushwick Expressway

 File:30 years of progress, 1934-1964 - Bushwick Expressway.jpg
Although the Lower Manhattan Expressway caused the most controversy, the first I-78 segment to be canceled was the Bushwick Expressway, which would have linked the Williamsburg Bridge to the Nassau Expressway. The original route would have utilized Broadway, Bushwick Avenue, and the Conduit Boulevard/Avenue corridor. An alternate routing, proposed by the TBTA in the 1960s, would have traveled slightly farther north along Broadway, Flushing Avenue or Meserole Street and Montrose Avenue, and Wyckoff Avenue, parallel to the Brooklyn-Queens border. This was the right-of-way of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)'s defunct Evergreen Branch. The Bushwick Expressway would then run east along Force Tube Avenue and Conduit Avenue to the Nassau Expressway. Under this plan, an additional spur would have branched off at approximately Wyckoff and Flushing Avenues and run northwest along Vandervoort Avenue parallel to Newtown Creek. It would have crossed the creek into Long Island City and traveled west along either the Long Island Expressway or the LIRR Montauk Branch in order to connect with the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, for which a third tube would have been constructed. The highway would have cut through the Williamsburg, Bushwick and East New York neighborhoods of Brooklyn. The 1960s routing would have also bisected Greenpoint; Ridgewood, Queens; and Highland Park and the Cemetery of the Evergreens. The East New York segment was partially constructed from Atlantic Avenue to the Belt Parkway in the early 1940s, when Conduit Boulevard/Avenue was widened. The current grass median of the boulevard would have facilitated the expressway.

 File:Arion Rd–88th St Conduit Bridge 13.jpg
The Bushwick Expressway was proposed around 1954, and included in the Port Authority's *Joint Study of Arterial Facilities* in 1955. The Wyckoff Avenue route was proposed in the 1960s. At this time, the TBTA envisioned the main route as an eight-lane highway, while the Williamsburg Bridge and Midtown Tunnel spurs would support six lanes of traffic. As with LOMEX, residents along the Bushwick Expressway's route opposed the project because it would necessitate the destruction of residences and businesses in Brooklyn and Queens; the TBTA estimated that nearly 4,000 families would be displaced by the expressway. At the urging of Mayor John V. Lindsay, the Cross Brooklyn Expressway, which would connect to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and not provide a link in I-78, was substituted for the Bushwick Expressway in 1967, in order to reduce traffic into Manhattan and because it would reduce the displacement of residents and businesses.

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Template:Cite journal
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Template:Cite news
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Template:Cite news
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Broadway Junction Transportation Study: NYC Department of City Planning Final Report-November 2008. New York City Department of City Planning (November 2008).
5. ↑ Template:Cite news
6. ↑ Greenway Master Plan: Conduit-Southern Queens-Laurelton-Cross Island. New York City Department of City Planning, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (July 2000).
7. ↑ Template:Cite news
8. ↑ Template:Cite news
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10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Template:Cite news
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12. ↑ Template:Cite news