Brian Lair on WNYC.

Let's talk about the Cross Bronx Expressway, one of the most infamous roads from the Robert

Moses era in New York City. Since its inception,

the Cross Bronx Expressway has been a point of antagonism. I think that word is fair for residents

in the surrounding areas, building this highway tore through neighborhoods and displaced thousands

of people, many thousands, who called the Bronx home. The communities left behind have

been living with the consequences ever since. The Bronx has the highest asthma hospitalization rates

in New York City. Children there are more likely to end up in the emergency room for asthma than

anywhere else in the five boroughs, and the cross Bronx is considered one of the reasons for

that. The highway is also, by any measure, essential infrastructure, right? It carries

150,000 vehicles a day is the number I have, and runs along a critical stretch of I-95, the main freight

corridor connecting everywhere on the East Coast from Miami to the

Canadian border. But the highway is also falling apart. Five of its bridges were built

before 1960, and the state says repairs can't wait. So, Governor Hokel, if you haven't heard this

yet, and the New York State Department of

Transportation have put forward a $900 million plan to repair five of those bridges. But the project

would also widen the highway's footprint, pushing traffic and pollution 50 feet closer to the Bronx River houses, in particular,

public housing complex where more than 3,000 residents already live just across the street

along one stretch of the cross Bronx. So today, the state faces a federal deadline to submit

its chosen plan for environmental review,

and once that happens, it becomes much harder to stop.

So there's the news hook. This is happening today.

...