State Now Considering Car-Free Connector Next To Cross-Bronx Expwy Instead of Covert Highway

The New York State Department of Transportation is now considering changing its plans to lock in a de-facto expansion of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, and turning a proposed “multimodal connector roadway” into a bike and pedestrian corridor.

The proposal for the bike-and-pedestrian path was included as one of three options New York State is considering as part of a $900-million project to rebuild five elevated sections of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. The state DOT showed off the idea in a late-October slideshow, obtained by Streetsblog, to update elected officials on the effort to cap the Cross Bronx and the elevated repair project.

That October update follows a presentation by state DOT to Bronx Community Board 6 in April that showed off a plan to build a parallel bypass road between Boston Road and Rosedale Avenue next to the elevated highway, which would then be demolished and rebuilt.

The traffic from the demolition would be diverted to the bypass road, the state said in the presentation, which also revealed that the state planned to keep the bypass road and convert it to a “multimodal connector” that would include eastbound and westbound general traffic and bus lanes. The structure was also supposed to have a shared use path for pedestrians and cyclists.

But the plan provoked outraged over the size of the structure, which would be built to highway standards and put another overpass on top of Starlight Park. Plus, there were doubts about whether additional bus service would ever materialize.

About a dozen Bronx elected officials, including Assembly Member Karines Reyes, who represents the area where the road is supposed to be built, signed a letter in late September asking state DOT to reconsider parts of the project, including whether Cross Bronx traffic could be rerouted elsewhere to eliminate the alleged need for the bypass road.

As part of the formal environmental assessment process for the repair project, state DOT is now considering the original four-lane bypass road, plus two other plans: one is a bike-pedestrian path and the other is two-lane road with a two-way bike lane on the south side of the road.

Bronx environmental advocates who remain vociferously opposed to the four-lane option were cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a bike-pedestrian route, though there isn’t much appetite to obscure Starlight Park and the Bronx River with another large overpass.

“While we like east-west connections that make things safer for people who are walking and biking, we have heard from community that there are other east- west connections that could be invested in so that you don’t have to build an overpass to make that happen,” said Daniel Ranells, the director of programs and operations at the Bronx River Alliance.

State DOT did not respond to a question about whether the two-lane road could be used exclusively for buses. It’s also unclear, if the state chooses the two-lane road or the bike-pedestrian path, how those changes to the connector road that state DOT pitched in April will affect the state’s plan to build another piece of the connector road as part of another Cross Bronx repair project between Webster and Third avenues, or a larger plan to build an east-west connector road all the way across the Bronx.

Ranells was also critical of the amount of public involvement in the plan so far.

“We’re still looking for more information for the public to access and interact with the design process and the environmental assessment process. There’s been a lack of clarity in how the public engages in this process,” he said.

The most-recent state DOT slideshow said that a draft environmental assessment and public hearings on the project will both take place during this winter with a final EA to be relreased in the spring of 2025.

The slideshow ended with a promise that the multimodal connector would “be a major step forward in New York State Department of Transportation’s efforts in reconnecting communities,” a promise that seems in conflict with the reconstruction of the Cross-Bronx and the construction of a parallel roadway.