Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at why traffic on one section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway will probably be slower than usual this weekend. We’ll also get details on the resignation of the city’s police commissioner after federal agents seized his phone.
It is one of the city’s most-traveled stretches of highway, and one of the most dreaded. It is also one of the shortest, only 300 feet. If traffic is moving at the speed limit, a car would zip over it in a few seconds.
It is the infamous B.Q.E. Central segment of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which carries traffic heading toward the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
Only one lane of the two-lane B.Q.E. Central will be open this weekend. Construction crews will be at work in the other two lanes from 1 a.m. Saturday until 5 a.m. Monday. The same timetable is on the calendar for next weekend.
Their mission will be to install what the city’s Department of Transportation calls weigh-in-motion equipment. They will be burying sensors that are essentially electronic scales under the pavement. The sensors can detect trucks that weigh more than regulations allow.
Once the sensors are switched on and calibrated — and paired with video cameras recording the license plates of vehicles that roll over the sensors — the city can fine too-heavy trucks as much as $650 for violating weight limits.
The city said there would be a 90-day warning period, during which the owners of overweight trucks would be notified but not fined. The Transportation Department will begin weight-limit enforcement on the B.Q.E., with fines, by the end of the year.
City transportation officials say that penalizing overweight trucks is important because that section of the B.Q.E. is crumbling.
Its deterioration is part of the complicated story of the B.Q.E., which was constructed in sections in the 1940s and 1950s and has long been cursed by drivers for its narrow lanes and potholes. It has also been celebrated for its stunning views of Manhattan — views that drivers never look at, because of course they keep their eyes on the road, and that pedestrians see from the Brooklyn Heights promenade atop the triple cantilever structure.
That three-level design was an engineering achievement when it was new. But it is supported by reinforcing rods boxed in by concrete. And they are corroding from road salt and moisture that have dribbled in.
Several years ago, a study panel concluded that the B.Q.E. was deteriorating faster than the city had expected, in part because of overweight trucks. The panel recommended eliminating two of the six lanes — one in each direction — and the city did so in 2021.
The weight sensors were another step in trying to extend the life of the B.Q.E. The city installed sensors on the three Queens-bound lanes, a major artery for freight bound for New York City from New Jersey, last year. Several states, including California and Maryland, have experimented with sensors. Maryland put them in to catch trucks that bypass weigh stations. As the National Institute of Standards and Technology noted in April, weigh stations require space the B.Q.E. does not have.
The transportation commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez, said in July that automated enforcement had reduced the number of overweight trucks by 64 percent over seven months. The Transportation Department said that total traffic had remained steady during that time.
Lincoln Restler, a City Council member from Brooklyn who had criticized the Adams administration in the past for not being more aggressive with repairs on the B.Q.E., was quoted in the city’s news release announcing the weekend lane closings as saying that the weigh-in-motion system would “extend the life span” of the triple cantilever.
Weather
Sunny, with a high near 82. Mostly clear in the evening, with temperatures in the mid-60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Oct. 3 (Rosh Hashana).
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The police commissioner resigns
The fallout from last week’s seizures of cellphones belonging to high-ranking city officials continued on Thursday as Edward Caban resigned as police commissioner.
Mayor Eric Adams’s administration had asked him to step aside. Caban said in a memo to the department that news reports had “created a distraction for the department.” He added: “The N.Y.P.D. deserves someone who can solely focus on protecting and serving New York City.”
Of four investigations swirling around the Adams administration, the one that touched Caban involves the Internal Revenue Service, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The inquiry also involves his twin brother, James Caban, a former police officer who was fired in 2001. James Caban’s phone was also seized last week, according to one of the people. Edward Caban’s lawyers said that the commissioner was not a target.
Caban had begun the week at Police Headquarters, where on Monday he attended the annual security briefing with Jewish leaders about the High Holy Days. But by late Wednesday, it had become clear that his future at the department was uncertain at best. The mayor told WABC-TV that he was “extremely fond of Commissioner Caban” but left open the question of whether Caban would remain on the job.
The mayor, a retired police captain who served on the force with the commissioner’s father and was close to him, appointed Mr. Caban in July 2023, making him the department’s first Latino commissioner.
Earlier, Mr. Adams had pushed for Caban, who he had known through his father, to become deputy commissioner in 2022 under Keechant Sewell, the first woman to hold the job. Mr. Adams ignored the department’s ranks of chiefs to make the promotion. Caban succeeded Sewell when she resigned in June 2023 after only 18 months frustrated, according to people close to her, over being undermined by the mayor and some of his senior aides.
METROPOLITAN diary
Rerouted
Dear Diary:
I got on a C train at the Jay Street-MetroTech station and noticed an older woman who appeared to be lost.
I asked if she was, and she said she had hopped on the train heading to Manhattan but was now confused because of all the weekend rerouting.
I offered to help her.
“Are you from out of town?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “indeed I am — from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.”
— Kiho Cha
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post What’s Being Buried on the B.Q.E. This Weekend appeared first on New York Times.
