Opinion: Gov. Hochul’s Five Bridges Project Pours More Concrete into Bronx Wounds

“I stand shoulder‑to‑shoulder with community groups demanding: fix the bridges — but don’t build a park‑spanning bypass. Instead, invest in highway capping, green buffers, clean transit service, and safe walking and biking paths.”

The Bronx has once again been offered a hollow promise: Gov. Kathy Hochul and the State Department of Transportation’s so‑called “Five Bridges Project” comes dressed as infrastructure repair, but it really doubles down on the Cross Bronx Expressway’s legacy of environmental injustice.

Officially billed as a $900 million effort to rehabilitate or replace five aging bridges between Boston Road and Rosedale Avenue, this one‑mile corridor project would also add a new, temporary elevated roadway over the Bronx River with four lanes, increasing highway capacity—not community access. 

In response, the Bronx River Alliance and the Stop the Cross Bronx Expansion coalition—joined by local nonprofits, schools, and residents—mobilized to reject the expansion plan, calling for a full environmental impact statement and community‑led alternatives instead.

This controversy resonates deeply with me: in November, I co‑signed letters alongside U,S, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez and NYS Assemblymember Emérita Torres demanding the state rethink the expansion and return to community‑first planning. I also publicly opposed elevated bypasses that echo Robert Moses‑era destruction—an insult to a borough still recovering from those wounds.

Yes: these bridges need repair. And yes: safety upgrades and better pedestrian, bicycle, and transit access are overdue. But widening the corridor and cementing more highway lanes won’t heal the Bronx—it will deepen the scar. We’ve lived this pattern before: zoning, dust, disruptions, air pollution. Countless families already can’t open windows due to lingering fumes; adding permanent traffic capacity only accelerates respiratory illness, noise, water runoff, and climate harm.

Despite NYSDOT’s public meetings in early June at the Bronx River Art Center, residents overwhelmingly say that state planners are offering no meaningful alternative, limited transparency, and no guarantees that highway connectors won’t erase trees, access points, or park views—especially along the Bronx River Greenway in Starlight Park.

I stand shoulder‑to‑shoulder with community groups demanding: fix the bridges—but don’t build a park‑spanning bypass. Instead, invest in highway capping, green buffers, clean transit service, and safe walking and biking paths. Bronxites have already pushed to cap the Cross Bronx with green space and pedestrian walkways on the portions of the roadway that sit below-grade — a safe and cost-effective way to reconnect neighborhoods and depollute the corridor.

In fact, in response to our community’s advocacy to cap the highway, NYC’s Department of Transportation funded the Reimagine the Cross Bronx study to identify forward-thinking improvements for the Cross Bronx and reverse the harms of Robert Moses’ racist urban planning. Nonetheless, NYSDOT is choosing to overlook our community’s priorities, disregarding the study’s findings in the design of the Five Bridges project.

As City Council Majority Leader, I respectfully call on Gov. Hochul to build on her previous leadership in rethinking infrastructure projects—like the important reconsideration of the LaGuardia AirTrain plan—and to bring that same commitment to this effort. It’s crucial to engage in genuine community-driven planning, support public alternatives for reconnecting neighborhoods, and uphold our state’s climate goals.

The Bronx is in a climate crisis. It’s time to lead on environmental justice, public health, and neighborhood resilience. Any project worth doing must elevate the voices who live here, not drown them under more concrete and added traffic.

We remain open to constructive partnership. But we will not stand by as our communities are sacrificed to an outdated highway agenda. We deserve infrastructure that respects health, connectivity, and equity—not a widened highway masquerading as progress.

Amanda Farías is the majority leader of the New York City Council where she represents the Bronx’s Council District 18.