Two Futures for NYC’s Aging Highways:
Rehabilitate them or replace them with street-level transit, trees, parks, and neighborhood connections. This model prices both for the BQE over a 30 year period to visualize what we currently plan to spend and what we could save if we were to make different choices. Challenge the assumptions.
Because Robert Moses shouldn’t get to choose for you, too.
Removing the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — all 16.83 miles from the Bay Ridge terminal to the Grand Central Parkway and LGA — and replacing it with transit at street level costs the public less over 30 years than rebuilding it.
Highway rebuild and maintenance rates are built from NYC DOT, NYSDOT and FHWA figures; transit rates from comparable US projects and National Transit Database actuals. Anything not directly sourced is clearly marked as a planning assumption wherever it appears. If you have credible sourcing for any of them, email us at info@offramp.nyc.
How to read this
Every number is a 30-year net present value, 2029–2058, bond-financed on identical terms for both futures. The gray bar is the cost of rebuilding the BQE in place, priced at the $4,000M NYC DOT announced on 24 August 2026 for BQE Central and full reconstruction for the state-owned segments north and south of it. The blue bar is the cost of demolishing it and building transit on the land — construction, vehicles and operations, minus fares, property tax and land sales. The gap is public money saved. Every assumption below is adjustable; the formulas are not. Terms of art are defined at the foot of the page.
Rebuild vs Removal · 30-yr NPV
What replaces it
| Mode | Route-miles | Stations | Fleet | Peak demand | Guideway capacity | Capacity check | Farebox recovery | O&M / boarding |
|---|
- pphpd
- Passengers per hour per direction — the standard unit for how many people a transit line moves past a point in its busier direction during the busiest hour.
- Peak demand
- How many people want to travel through the busiest point of the corridor in the busiest hour, in the busier direction. Derived from daily boardings, the share of trips that fall in the peak hour, the directional split, and how concentrated the load is at the busiest link.
- Guideway capacity
- How many people the line can carry past that point in an hour — vehicle capacity multiplied by the most frequent service the guideway can run. Capacity must exceed peak demand, and the headroom is the margin between them.
Farebox recovery is calculated at the fare a Select Bus Service rider actually generates — about $0.60 per boarding after free transfers, reduced fares and unlimited passes, from the FTA National Transit Database, 2024 Annual Agency Profile for MTA New York City Transit. NYCT's own SBS recovery is 16.1%. Weekday boardings are annualised at 320 equivalent service days, the NYCT bus figure, not 365. If the corridor performs as a trunk line rather than a feeder, the National Transit Database heavy-rail capture of $1.36 applies instead and the savings rise; the slider above tests it.
Assumptions 🔒 Formulas locked — inputs only
* Highway soft cost — design, engineering and construction management — is applied only to the at-grade and trench rates, which are construction costs alone. The elevated rate and the BQE Central programme figure already contain the agency's own design, inspection and QC loading, so charging it again there would double-count.
Unit costs — challenge them Every rate is editable
These tables are the whole argument. Open any one and type over a cell — the model re-solves instantly. The right-hand column shows what each rate is carrying in the current scenario, so you can see which numbers move the answer and which are inert. All figures are in millions of dollars, 2026 value.
Where the transit money goes 2026$, before escalation & financing
| Component | 2026$ | Note |
|---|
People vs. pavement · per lane, per hour
One highway lane moves about 2,070 people per hour (1,800 vehicles at the BQE's average occupancy of roughly 1.15 people per vehicle). The same width of right-of-way, given to transit:
Terms used on this page
- Lane-mile
- One mile of one traffic lane. A six-lane highway one mile long is six lane-miles. Highway rebuild, demolition and maintenance are all priced per lane-mile, because cost scales with how much pavement and structure there is, not just how long the road is.
- Route-mile
- One mile of transit line, however many tracks or lanes it has. Guideway and shared systems are priced per route-mile.
- Track-mile
- One mile of a single track or busway lane. A two-way line one route-mile long is two track-miles. Operating cost is priced per track-mile per year.
- Net present value (NPV)
- All future costs and revenues converted to what they are worth in today's dollars, so a bill due in 2050 can be compared with one due next year.
- Discount rate
- The rate at which future dollars are converted to present ones. This model uses 4.1%, the US Office of Management and Budget's Circular A-94 rate for long-horizon public investment.
- Escalation
- How fast construction prices rise year to year. Applied identically to both futures, so it does not tilt the comparison.
- Soft cost & contingency
- Design, engineering, construction management, and the allowance for what a pre-engineering estimate does not yet know. Transit carries 60%. Highway rebuild carries 35% contingency, plus 35% soft cost on the at-grade and trench rates only — the elevated rate and the BQE Central programme figure already contain the agency's own design and inspection loading.
- Headway
- The time between vehicles. A 60-second headway means a bus every minute.
- Farebox recovery
- The share of operating cost covered by fare revenue. Every US transit system needs subsidy; the question is how much.
- Blended fare
- What a rider actually generates per boarding, after free transfers, reduced fares and unlimited passes — not the posted fare.
- Trench
- A stretch of highway running below street level in an open cut, walled on both sides.
- Viaduct
- A stretch of highway carried above street level on structure.
Sources
- NYC DOT — BQE Central rehabilitation announcement, 24 August 2026
- NYC DOT — BQE Central MPDG application, FY2023–24, Project Budget Tables 1 and 2
- NYSDOT — Draft Design Report / Environmental Assessment, PIN X727.07, November 2025, Table S.5-1
- NYSDOT — Region 11 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program, FFY2026–2029
- NYSDOT — Retaining Wall Inventory and Inspection Program
- FHWA — Highway Economic Requirements System (HERS)
- FHWA — National Bridge Inventory, 2025
- FTA — National Transit Database, 2024 Annual Agency Profile, MTA New York City Transit
- US Office of Management and Budget — Circular A-94
- Transit Costs Project, NYU Marron Institute