Borough Groups Join Forces to Oppose Cross-Bronx Expansion Project

 

New York State is driving a $900 million effort to “transform” the highway to accommodate bridge repair work. Advocates and locals are trying to hit the brakes. 

This article originally appeared in The City.

By Jonathan Custodio

Follow @Bronxvoice1

BRONX - More than a dozen community and advocacy groups are joining forces against a $900 million “Five Bridges Project” to “transform” the Cross Bronx Expressway. 

That project, which Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in January, aims to repair five bridges along the Cross Bronx Expressway. Key to the project is a “multi-modal connector” — temporary new roadways to keep traffic flowing that would then become permanent bus, bike and pedestrian lanes alongside the highway. A $150 million federal grant is helping pay for the project.

The coalition of Bronx and transit groups — including the Bronx River Alliance, Transportation Alternatives, Riders Alliance, Bronx Community Board 6, The Point CDC, Nos Quedamos and Morning Glory Community Garden — is calling on the governor to abandon the state Department of Transportation’s plan and find a way to repair those bridges without building those additional lanes, which they say would increase air pollution and stormwater runoff. 

Traffic moves on the Cross Bronx Expressway near the Boston Road Bridge, July 26, 2024.

Several of the groups had called on the state in July to slow down its ambitious and expensive plan to allow for more community input; now, they’re outright opposing it. 

The shift came after U.S. Reps. Ritchie Torres and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both Democrats, last week sent a letter to Hochul saying they are “strongly opposed to the direction in which the project is trending,’ and arguing that “large infrastructure projects, however massive, should have the buy-in of local leaders to benefit those living in the community.” 

Torres spoke at the group’s press conference Monday at East 177th St. and Devoe Ave., near where the additional roadways would run. “The Bronx has the highest rate of asthma hospitalization in the state. That is not a coincidence, that is a consequence of the Cross Bronx Expressway,” Torres said. 

Congressional Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) speaks in front of the West Farms Bus Depot in opposition to a state plan to build additional roadways during the repair of five bridges on the Cross Bronx Expressway, Nov. 25, 2024.

He added that “despite the deceptive advertising, these connector roads are disconnectors of The Bronx” — alluding to the destruction wrought on borough neighborhoods by the original construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. 

Danny Pearlstein, spokesperson for the Riders Alliance, noted that upon becoming governor Hochul scrapped plans she inherited to build a convoluted light rail connection to LaGuardia Airport. 

Now, he said, “she's got to do the same thing here.” 

A spokesperson for the state Department of Transportation stressed that the Hochul administration is seeking local collaboration.

“As these local officials and advocates are well aware, this major investment to replace the Bronx’s crumbling infrastructure is in its earliest phases, and no decisions will be made without public input,” said NYSDOT spokesperson Glenn Blain. 

“The New York State Department of Transportation remains committed to engaging in good faith with the community at every step of the process, but mischaracterizing this project or its current status will not deliver the transformative investments that Bronx residents deserve. We look forward to working with community members to craft a final project plan that reflects the need for safer bridges, pedestrian and bike accessibility, and connectivity to public transit.”

The project would require four years of construction, tentatively scheduled to begin sometime next year. 

The Disconnection of The Bronx

Built in 1963 by Robert Moses, the Cross Bronx Expressway sliced through Bronx neighborhoods while becoming a major contributor to the borough’s air pollution and high asthma rates, particularly in the South Bronx. 

Nilka Martell, co-founder of social and environmental group Loving The Bronx, a group that’s pushed since 2016 to cap the expressway as a way to reduce noise and air pollution while reuniting neighborhoods, said at the press conference that Hochul’s plan “seeks to do the opposite by adding connector roads and bypass roads, which will intensify existing problems by, in essence, creating an expansion of the Cross Bronx Expressway.” 

She noted that a $2 million feasibility study to reimagine the highway, which Torres and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer helped secure, is expected to be completed by the end of this year. That reimagining could possibly include capping parts of the highway both east and west of the bridges. 

But the state hasn’t even “looked at alternatives” to the connector roads, said Bronx River Alliance executive director Siddhartha Sanchez.

“We’ve put out those ideas. Initially, the state did not have a scenario where they would rebuild in place, and over the last few months they've added that to part of the scenarios that they're studying,” said Sanchez. “But the reality is that they haven't looked at alternatives. They haven't presented the options that they studied in arriving at the proposal that they're recommending.” 

Torres had initially supported the plan when it was announced in January, saying that the “funding allows the New York State Department of Transportation to right the wrongdoings of Robert Moses and decades of neglect that have subjected Bronxites to dangerous levels of pollution.”

But, he said on Monday, he’d changed his tune because the state misled him. 

“It was framed to me as reconnecting the Cross Bronx Expressway in the context of our proposal for capping. And then when the organizations on the ground read the fine print and said the state is misleading us: this is not actually reconnecting. This is simply expanding the highway, which will only deepen the disconnection of the Bronx,” said Torres. 

“Honesty is a precondition for alternatives,” he noted. “The state is denying that it's expanding the Cross Bronx Expressway. So until the state is open and honest about its true intentions, it's going to limit our ability to find alternatives.” 

Removing his “House of Representatives” emblem to take political questions afterward, Torres said he’s planning to embark in December or January on the statewide tour he announced in an interview this month with Politico, and plans to make a decision on a 2026 primary challenge to Hochul by mid-2025 —  around the time of the June mayoral primary. Asked about that race, Torres didn’t rule out a last-minute entry into the city race. 

“I think it is more probable that I run for governor than mayor, but nothing is off the table,” Torres said. 

‘Y’all Ain’t Listening’

Along with the advocates and politicians at Monday’s event were students from nearby Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, including Jeremiah Rivera, 16, Yesliann Casillas, 15, and Jeremiah Briggs, 16.

Students from Fannie Lou Hamer High School spoke in opposition to additional roadways to the Cross Bronx Expressway, Nov. 25, 2024.

“I believe that the Cross Bronx was one of the worst things ever built imaginable, even though, yes, it takes trucks from one state to another, it’s still such a big pollutant to our community,” said Casillas, who said she has a sister with asthma. 

“I believe The Bronx is so beautiful,” chimed in Rivera. “It's such a place that we can make amazing, but we can only make it as amazing as the city wants to. We, the people, can only do so much.” 

Briggs, for his part, wrote a poem for the occasion entitled “Coincidence,” that begins “I sit in pollution, but I ain’t littering. Asthmatic children, but y’all ain’t listening.” 

The poem, Briggs said, was written “because before I came to the school I didn't know why there’s Bronx pollution, I just know there was Bronx pollution. I didn't know there was a highway plan until today. There's a reason for this. It's not a coincidence. They were made to keep back information from us, withhold it, because with this information, we're powerful.” 

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