Here's How The $1.2T Infrastructure Bill Could Reshape NYC

NEW YORK CITY — A recently passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill could literally reshape New York City and how people travel within and outside it.

But while funding for some projects is secured, city leaders and officials are still wrangling how billions in federal dollars will be spent.

Much of that likely will happen after Mayor Bill de Blasio leaves office. Still, Hizzoner praised the bill's passage as a boon for a city with crumbling roads and bridges, communities in dire need of transit access and a ballooning traffic deaths.

"It's so important for the future of New York City," he said last week. "We're one of the places that needs the support the most."

Gov. Kathy Hochul was similarly effusive.

"Congress has made good on its promise to deliver infrastructure funding through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, meaning New York will be able to make critical investments in our roads, bridges, and transit," she said in a statement. "This funding also helps make our infrastructure more resilient to climate change and will expand access to clean water, supporting New York's economic growth and improving public health."

Here is some of what New York could or will see from the infrastructure bill.

MTA's $10.1 billion boost

The infrastructure bill set aside roughly $14 billion for transit needs in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

A deal haggled by tri-state governors set aside $10.85 billion for New York, most of which will go toward the MTA.

MTA saw ridership crater — and revenues hemorrhage — during the coronavirus pandemic, so the $10.1 billion boost is welcome.

Janno Lieber, the MTA's acting chair and CEO, recently told THE CITY the money likely will first go toward projects already in the works such as the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway.

“While we don’t know exactly what will be funded on every category, it’s pretty likely the Second Avenue Subway is going to be first to benefit,” Lieber said, according to THE CITY.

Other projects on the table include a new Utica Avenue subway line in Brooklyn and a Bay Ridge subway branch linking Brooklyn and Queens without veering into Manhattan, Lieber has said.

Capping the Cross Bronx

The Cross Bronx Expressway is living symbol of how racism is baked into the city's roads — at least according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Ritchie Torres.

The pair held a rally last week to drum up support for capping the Robert Moses-built expressway, which displaced 40,000 largely Black working-class New Yorkers during its construction and left a trail of pollution and bad health outcomes in the surrounding community.

“The Cross Bronx Expressway is both a literal and metaphorical structure of racism with diesel truck traffic polluting the air residents breathe everyday," Torres said in a statement."Senator Schumer and I are fighting for federal dollars to cap the Cross Bronx and redesign it so that our communities can be healthier, cleaner and safer for all resident."

Schumer and Torres support putting a partial cap the over the roadway, improving biking and bus connections in the east-west corridor near the highway and reducing emissions and cars from the expressway.

They propose to kick-start the project with $1 billion from a "Reconnecting Communities Fund" to pay for a study and $7.5 billion for con which can be used in the future construction phases of the project.

Knocking Down and Rebuilding the BQE

The crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway should be knocked down and rebuilt underground.

That's the idea Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of New York Building Congress, enthusiastically supported during a meeting of business leaders last week, Gothamist reported.

“And it's called knocking down, redesigning and rebuilding a Brooklyn-Queens Expressway for people, for communities, and for all of us,” he said. “I think it’s critical.”

De Blasio's administration has supported a piecemeal approach to fixing a deteriorating BQE stretch. Officials proposed to rehab a stretch of road to make it last until 2040.

But the final step of this plan is to essentially to develop a long-term plan.

Scissura's proposal — which, it should be noted, carries no official backing yet — is much more ambitious. He wants the BQE's elevated highway to be replaced with an underground tunnel and to convert road space for bike lanes and parks, Gothamist reported.

“It is the most ridiculous, disgusting eyesore," he said at the meeting, according to the New York Post. "It’s dangerous, it’s polluted, it’s rusted. Let’s all chant, ‘Tear the BQE down! Tear the BQE down.'"

Gateway Tunnel

Much-needed repairs to Superstorm Sandy-damaged tubes and a new proposed rail tunnel under the Hudson River got $8 billion of love in the infrastructure bill.

The Gateway Tunnel project has moved by fits and starts for a decade after the storm.

But this year it passed a crucial environmental review that paved the way for new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, which will bring more train traffic to and from New Jersey through Penn Station. The project also rehab the century-old North River Tunnel that sustained serious damage during Sandy.

Schumer previously called it "probably the most important public works project in America." He told the New York Post after the infrastructure bill's passage that the $8 billion specifically for the project, plus part of another $66 billion for Amtrak, will help fund the project when construction likely begins in 2023.

“There’s more than enough funding here to fund Gateway," he told the Post. "This will get it off to a very strong start."