Brooklyn/Queens Truck Pike for NYC

There’s a fascinating scheme in New York City for a truck toll route, mostly in tunnel and on abandoned railroad reservations, arching through Brooklyn and Queens with a spur to Kennedy Airport’s cargo area. It is being hatched as a response to neighborhood angst in the two NYC boroughs about truck traffic on local streets, as well as to meeting complaints of high truck operating costs on congested highways on Long Island. The author (not ready to be identified) says the Brooklyn-Queens Truck Pike (BQTP) will offer tangible benefits to truckers sufficient to offset the tolls, so trucks won’t have to be regulated onto the route – an alternative to being tied up on the Van Wyck Exwy and the LIE. Trucks are already excluded from the Belt, Interboro (Robinson), and Grand Central parkways. The railnuts should be reassured that the BQTP scheme will also provide better connections to intermodal yards, so rail can compete for the longhaul business. The sprawl-haters should - note the ‘sh-’ not the ‘w-’ - like the idea of revivifying settled areas, instead of encouraging congested businesses to move to the west of NJ, or beyond. Little government funding would be required, but much government cooperation. That is often, unfortunately, the scarcest of all resources in these parts.