I've driven on bad roads all over the United States and the contiguous countries, and there is none that compares in abysmal design to the Cross Bronx Expressway. When sewers are designed, a narrow channel is constructed at the bottom of the sewer pipe so that the pressure of flow will always be enough to push the ordure along. That's my analogy to the Cross-Bronx Expressway.
It stinks. Being below grade, all the noxious heavier-than-air fumes, like CO2, CO, HS2, burnt rubber, (Sorry, I don't know the chemical formula for that one.), settle into it. It appears to be cleaned only when the volume of roadside debris from crashes and people using it as a garbage chute threatens to cause traffic to slow below the standard 5 mph.
I'll bet there are four generations of families whose names end in vowels whose wealth can be traced to this one "artery".
The design was SO bad, SO poorly thought out, that, instead of making the overpasses flush with the retaining wall, they had them sticking out six feet. Perfect for demolishing any car that might encounter it at 2 or 3 a.m., when returning from a bar, the driver careering along at 50 mph or some other unheard of velocity that never occurs when normal people are awake.
When I was still in single digits, they began construction of this obscenity. It started out cursed. The construction crews had put trenches all over the place with rebar embedded in the bottom in concrete, about four feet protruded above the concrete, the rebar being about eight feet below the surface of the ground. On weekends, nobody worked (of course), and the *a,*e, and *o construction companies didn't hire the security guards needed to keep kids off the site. A tragedy unfolded before my eyes which I will leave you to imagine.
Since all of NYC's garbage is now being shipped to Pennsylvania, courtesy of noble former Mayor Giulian -i's political repayment to the Republican City Council member from Staten Island, why don't we ship it to the Bronx instead, fill the Cross-Bronx Expressway with it, top it with several feet of topsoil, and re-name it the Cross-Bronx Park?
Cordially, YOGI
Posts: 214 | Location: SF,CA | Registered: 14 March 2004
