New York State DOT officials and consultants have come up with 26 options for fixing the Kosciuszko Bridge, which spans Newtown Creek along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The options were developed as part of the "scoping" process for the bridge project’s environmental impact statement.

21 of the options — 80% of those developed by the agency — recommend adding lanes to the bridge and the connecting expressway segments from Morgan Avenue, Brooklyn to the Long Island Expressway-BQE interchange in Queens.

Recent BQE rehabilitation in Brooklyn did not widen the highway, so it is unclear how extra lanes (most options call for 8) on the bridge would mesh with 6 lanes immediately south. The DOT’s reasoning for widening a relatively short segment of the BQE will become more apparent as the project proceeds. Perhaps a future project or one connected with the Kosciuszko rehabilitation could widen the highway as far south as its connections to the Williamsburg Bridge. Project documents call the additional lanes in every case "auxiliary lanes" but do not describe how these differ from the regular highway lanes next to them.

One issue with the Kosciuszko Bridge is its height — to keep Newtown Creek navigable, the highway climbs considerably. That slows trucks and the vehicles around them. Additional lanes could serve as climbing lanes to alleviate the problem. Three options among the 26 would address the issue by lowering the bridge. However, all three of these options (drawbridge, low fixed bridge and creek-filling) as proposed by the DOT also call for construction of additional lanes.

The gamut of scenarios includes also looks at tunneling, entirely new bridges, smaller bridges built alongside the existing Kosciuszko and double decking the bridge. For now, the options are not sufficiently detailed to include evaluations of possible features such as bike paths and HOV lanes. The EIS process still has considerable room to run — the DOT expects to have a draft impact statement by the end of 2004.

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