Gowanus Tunnel?

If you live in Bay Ridge and have a car you have to be nuts. First, finding a parking spot on the street is half-impossible. Second, if you're traveling across to Staten Island or New Jersey, you typically go over the Verrazzano Bridge and pay an obscene $9 westbound toll to do so. ( Heretake a look at current traffic there.)

And you're surrounded by three of the worst highways in America:

• Just on the other side of that $9 Verrazano Toll Booth is the Staten Island Expressway, a road with traffic so bad that the local news stations no longer bother to report traffic jams there.
• To the east is the Belt Parkway, with its narrow lanes and permanent slowdown between the Verrazano and Bay Parkway
• But by far the worst road is the elevated Gowanus Expressway. This noisy, patched, shaking pothole filled deathtrap connects Bay Ridge and the Battery Tunnel. The traffic is unbelievably heavy, especially Manhattan-bound. Without a breakdown lane, it's dangerous. And it blocks the sun for about a sixty block stretch of Third Avenue going into Hamilton Avenue.

It would be a huge improvement to West Brooklyn if the Gowanus Expressway could be replaced. And there has been serious talk of that-- of replacing it with a tunnel. The media has reported that NY State has approved a route for a tunnel--it looks as though the Belt Parkway between 65th Street and the Gowanus itself --along First Avenue-- would be placed underground. This presumably would allow for a much nicer park in Bay Ridge along the Shore. And the First Avenue route for the Gowanus would allow the current elevated monstrosity to stay up until the tunnel was completed.

The problem with a tunnel alternative is that it is much more expensive than an elevated Lots of Federal money would be needed. Does NYC's Congressional delegation have the muscle to get these funds? Will the sun ever shine on Third Avenue in Sunset Park again?

If anyone has a link to additional information on this project, please shoot me a note at
bayridgephantom@gmail.com

PS- Is the Cross-Harbor Tunnel idea still alive? If it is, it would make a lot of sense to built it at the same time as the Gowanus Tunnel. Local politicians, lets swing for the fences. Lets get these important projects built.