Once again we are confronted with New York City’s crumbling infrastructure.
That’s the kind of sentence I would write if I were more passionate about local politics and I knew what I was talking about. The BQE is in desperate need of repair and one of the solutions is to divert traffic to the Brooklyn Promenade level with a temporary six-lane highway. I guess the repairs are pretty bad if they’re going to build another highway just to fix the current broken highway. They’re estimating the project will take six years. Six years in which the Brooklyn Promenade, understandably, will be shut down.
I really should have studied civil engineering in college, not chemical. I might have some idea what the hell is going on.
The L train is shutting down next year because of damage done during Hurricane Sandy, and hopefully to better accommodate the hundreds of thousands of commuters that it probably wasn’t designed to handle every day. The subway is a mess in general. It’s over a hundred years old. Everything breaks down eventually.
But I’m getting off topic. This is about the Brooklyn Promenade. I love the Promenade. I can’t claim that it’s one of my favorite New York spots and that I’ll be devastated without it. I, a white Park Slope resident, will be able to go about my life without it. And the millionaire residents of Brooklyn Heights who gaze down upon it from their kitchen windows will make due with seeing traffic there instead. It’s a luxury problem. But it still sucks.
One of the things that I love about running is that it’s like taking a walk but it’s longer and faster. I’m running all over the city and seeing things I haven’t had the time to see in years. I’m running over the Brooklyn Bridge and going to Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Promenade at least once a week. Tonight I went for a run with my friends Fred and Liz. It was the five bridges run, a route created by our mutual friend Rick a few years ago. You start in Manhattan, go over the 59th Street Bridge, then the Pulaski, the Williamsburg, the Manhattan, and finally the Brooklyn Bridge. Maybe I’m just going through a phase where I’m appreciating the structures of New York. But the Promenade is one of the coolest spots in all of Brooklyn, if not the entire city.
Six years is a long time. For a comparison, Donald Trump hasn’t been president for two years yet and how long does that feel? If they start this project when I’m 42, it won’t be finished until I’m 48. Almost fifty.
Frankly, it’s just a bummer and an increasingly normal part of living in New York.
