What The BQE Rebuild Could Mean For Williamsburg Traffic

By Williamsburg 365 Staff

The city’s $4 billion plan to rebuild the oldest part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway should not flood Williamsburg streets with cars, as long as the temporary roads work the way the city says they will.

The city has not released its own traffic numbers for Williamsburg yet. But a Williamsburg 365 Comprehensive Traffic Impact Study using 10 years of traffic data found that Williamsburg would see about 1,000 extra cars a day during the morning and evening rush hours

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the plan on Aug. 24. It covers “BQE Central,” the 1.5-mile stretch the city owns between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street in Brooklyn Heights. That includes the triple cantilever under the Promenade. The Williamsburg section of the highway is not being rebuilt.

The city’s Department of Transportation said the highway “will remain two lanes and will not expand, nor will interchanges be altered.” The exits “will remain as they are now.” That means the Williamsburg exits and the ramps to the bridges will stay the same.

For years, people in Williamsburg have worried that closing the BQE would push traffic onto Kent Avenue, Flushing Avenue, Broadway and other local streets. The city says it has planned for that.

Instead of closing the highway, the city will build temporary roads next to the sections being repaired. One would run over Furman Street from Atlantic Avenue to Columbia Heights. A second road, heading toward Queens, would run from Columbia Heights over the Brooklyn Bridge ramps to just before the Manhattan Bridge. That is the direction drivers take to get to Williamsburg.

“We’ll build a temporary road for traffic, which avoids sending tens of thousands of cars and trucks into local streets and keeps the highway operable during construction,” Mamdani said.

City officials warned that closing the road would send a “significant portion” of its roughly 130,000 daily trips onto local streets.

City sensors at Joralemon Street, in the section being rebuilt, counted about 130,000 vehicles on a normal weekday in May 2025. That was down from about 147,000 in fall 2019, according to city transportation data. Only about 5% of the day’s traffic passes through during the busiest hour, because the road stays busy for much of the day.