Bronx community activists and a growing cohort of elected officials are ramping up pressure on the state Department of Transportation to scrap plans for a mile-long service road over the Bronx River and Starlight Park, citing what they say will be environmental harm if the project goes through.
The coalition of activists and officials contend the proposed service road, part of a $900 million plan to update a series of bridges along the aging Cross-Bronx Expressway, would worsen air quality and congestion in an area already featuring sky-high asthma rates.
“No one's arguing against doing the repairs, but you could do the repairs within the existing footprint,” said Edmundo Martinez, a community organizer who’s part of the coalition opposing the construction of a new elevated structure.
The community coalition has held a series of rallies in recent months to raise awareness about the plan and advocate for alternatives and the state has held community meetings. Advocates have so far succeeded in getting the state Department of Transportation to eliminate two options for the Cross-Bronx Bridges Project that involve the construction of a service road — but it still hasn’t been taken off the table altogether.
“The state Department of Transportation appreciates the feedback we have received from the community as we continue to work through the environmental process for this project,” Rolando Infante, a spokesperson for the agency, said in a statement.
He added, “There is substantial agreement on the critical need for these five bridges to be replaced or rehabilitated, and that is what this project will accomplish. This project is not an expansion of the Cross-Bronx Expressway.”
City Council Majority Leader Amanda Farías, state Assemblymember Emérita Torres, state Sen. Gustavo Rivera and U.S. Reps. Ritchie Torres and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are among the elected officials who have raised concerns about building a new road as part of the Cross-Bronx plan.
“For the sake of our communities, the [state transportation department] must invest in safer and more sustainable alternatives that advance our environmental justice goals as recommended by the community,” Rivera said in a statement.
Children in the South Bronx have higher rates of emergency department visits for asthma than the rest of the city, according to city data, and research on the area has found that highway pollution is a contributing factor.
The state Department of Transportation has floated several options for completing the Cross-Bronx repairs, which the agency says are needed to improve safety on the highway and correct design flaws from when it was constructed in the 1940s and 1950s. Building a diversion road would allow construction to be completed two years earlier, by 2030, according to the DOT.
In response to community feedback, the agency recently scrapped two proposals that would leave the proposed service road open to cars after repairs on the highway are complete. But the agency is still considering another option to build the road and eventually convert it into a mixed-use path for pedestrians and cyclists.
Some critics say they are skeptical the agency would fulfill its promise to turn the structure into an attractive greenspace. And environmental advocates say building it at all would be detrimental to the surrounding community.
“The proposed traffic diversion structure, regardless of what form it eventually takes, would demolish a pretty significant footprint of mature tree canopy in [Starlight Park],” said Victoria Toro, the outreach manager at the Bronx River Alliance, a nonprofit that works to protect the Bronx River corridor.
Toro added that the South Bronx “already suffers from not enough tree canopy, not enough cooling infrastructure and too much air pollution.”
Bronx residents recently worked with city and state agencies to craft a range of proposals for making the area around the highway safer, more interconnected and more environmentally friendly, which were published earlier this year in a report called Reimagine the Cross Bronx. One of the more ambitious proposals involves capping sections of the highway and covering it with greenspace.
Advocates are calling on the state Department of Transportation to incorporate some of those proposals into its highway rehabilitation plan.
The Department of Transportation states on its website that the rehabilitation plan is separate from the Reimagine the Cross Bronx study and is “foundational to any future enhancements along the corridor.”
The agency is expected to release a draft assessment of the project’s environmental impact this fall, which will be subject to public comments before being finalized. Construction on the project is slated to begin in 2026.
