Brooklyn

Brooklyn Bridge’s SUV Ban Hidden in Plain Sight

It isn't just in California where SUV's are secretly banned from certain roadways. Right here in New York City, many SUVs are banned from the Brooklyn Bridge, but nobody seems to know it.

By Aaron Donovan

12:39 PM EDT on August 25, 2006

It isn’t just in California where SUV’s are secretly banned from certain roadways. Right here in New York City, many SUVs are banned from the Brooklyn Bridge, but nobody seems to know it.

Following on a Slate article about a similar phenomenon in California that came to our attention on Tuesday, Streetsblog correspondent Jason Varone snapped pictures of the signs pointing out the three-ton weight limit on the Brooklyn Bridge. Guess what? Navigators and Escalades are over the limit. So are Chevy Surburbans, Dodge Durangos, GMC Yukons, Hummers, Land Rovers, Range Rovers, Mercedes M Class 320 and 500s, Toyota Land Cruisers and Sequoias, and Ford Expeditions, among other SUV models.

Coming as it does underneath a sign reading “No trucks or buses,” most motorists undoubtedly assume that the 3-ton weight limit is meant to discourage trucks and buses only, not SUVs. And so they drive over it every day while the police, heavily present on a bridge that has been the target of foiled terrorist plots, fail to enforce the law.

As the decades have gone by, the number of people crossing the Brooklyn Bridge has decreased tremendously, but the weight of their stuff has gone up. One hopes the SUV owners stuck in traffic next time the bridge has to undergo the extra maintenance required by all that extra daily weight will pause for a moment of introspection and look in the rearview mirror when they wonder who’s to blame.

The weight limit is posted on the Brooklyn entrance as well.

Aaron Donovan

Before he began blogging about land use and transportation, Aaron Donovan wrote The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund's annual fundraising appeal for three years and earned a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia. Since then, he has worked for nonprofit organizations devoted to New York City economic development. He lives and works in the Financial District, and sees New York's pre-automobile built form as an asset that makes New York unique in the United States, and as a strategic advantage that should be capitalized upon.

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