Bridge Apartments Redux!

The question is which is better — a pleasant six-lane expressway or a massive city-sponsored housing project on top of the six-lane expressway:

Residents of Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill hailed a city plan that would build housing atop the nine-block-long Brooklyn-Queens Expressway trench that divides the neighborhoods from the Columbia Street waterfront.

The proposal is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s vision for a greener, more efficient, more crowded city, which he presented during an Earth Day speech at the Museum of Natural History on Sunday.

“[Decking it over] is a great idea, so long as we get [to add] some input and we’re sure that the housing is in harmony with our current stock,” said Buddy Scotto, the de facto Mayor of Carroll Gardens.

. . .

Back in August, a city consultant presented three possible ideas for the decking over the open-pit highway, ranging from a 200-unit, low-density rowhouse subdivision to a string of higher-density, 12-story buildings containing 1,500 units.

The pie-in-the-sky idea was given new life in the mayor’s Earth Day speech, which included 126 other green initiatives.

Overall, Bloomberg says the city must build 500,000 units of housing near public transportation by 2030 to make way for the expected one-million-person population boom.

“Our plan calls for doubling the amount of land available for possible housing development,” Hizzoner said in the Sunday speech. “We can do it by decking over railyards and highways, and using government land more productively.”

Have fun with that.