BQE Ranked as Road Most Congested in 2020

By Yehudit Garmaise

  It is not just your imagination: the BQE is the most congested highway in America.

  The transportation analytics firm INRIX reported that in 2020, not only did New York City had the worst traffic congestion in the US, but that the Brooklyn Queens Expressway from I-145 to Tillary Street, the Cross Bronx Expressway west of the Bronx River Parkway, and the BQE between 38th Street and Downtown Brooklyn were the country’s most backed up roads.

   This morning at his press conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed the gridlock on New Yorkers who drive more frequently, as a result of the pandemic.

    “I think the most obvious, immediate problem is the fact that in the pandemic more and more people turned to individual automobiles instead of mass transit,” the mayor said. “We've got to reverse that. We've got to reverse that aggressively and give people faith in mass transit again.

   The mayor then called the recent cuts the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (MTA) made to the Long Island Railroad “ridiculous.”

   “[The cuts are] unfair to folks who are coming here to work and coming here to take advantage of everything in New York City,” the mayor said. “We need folks coming here as part of our recovery. So, the MTA should restore those cuts to the Long Island Railroad immediately. They're just absolutely the reverse of what we need at this moment.

  “Look, this is an occasion for me to say, if we're going to give people faith in mass transit, there actually has to be service there for them.”

   Proposing an innovative idea that is approved of by many economists, the mayor said, “if we want to really support mass transit, we've got to move quickly on congestion pricing,” which involves tolls for the use of highways during rush hours. 

      “Congestion pricing takes advantage of the fact that the majority of rush hour drivers on a typical urban highway are not commuters,” says the U.S. DOT Federal Highway Administration website, which also says that it hopes to reduce congestion by diverting non-commuters to use other roadways. 

Photo by: Google