The Legacy of the Cross-Bronx and a Future Without Environmental Racism

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll end the show today by wrapping up our series West Farms 10460, about that neighborhood in the Bronx, with a conversation about one of the area's most notorious neighbors, the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Before we get into that conversation, a little bit of news in the City Council District 15 race that we've covered on the show, which includes part of West Farms, there's been an unofficial winner after 10 rounds of ranked-choice voting. Oswald Feliz, a tenant lawyer, and former State Committeeman is declaring victory, he will fill the vacancy previously held by Ritchie Torres, who got elected to Congress once the election is officially certified, but let's move on to the Cross Bronx. It's notorious enough if you're just driving on it. What if you have to live with it?

Last week, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that there was racism built into some of America's roads and expressways, the planners who built highways in so many American cities knew that their constructions would devastate the urban fabric of certain communities. If you live in certain places in Chicago, Boston, LA, or, of course, here in New York City, you might know this personally. In the Bronx, you might feel it near the Cross Bronx Expressway.

The Cross Bronx isn't just loud and congested, it also spews pollution and carbon monoxide. My guess now we're making the case for portions of the Expressway to be capped in favor of green spaces as a way to rectify a legacy of environmental racism.

Joining me now are Nilka Martell, founder and director of the community-based nonprofit organization Loving The Bronx, and Dr. Peter Muennig, professor of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Good morning to both of you and welcome to WNYC.

Dr. Peter Muennig: Good morning, Brian.

Nilka Martell: Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Nilka, I wonder if you could start it off by reflecting briefly on what it's been like to live in rather close proximity to the Cross Bronx Expressway as a lifelong resident of the Bronx, either for you, your loved ones, or people you've met through your activism?

Nilka Martell: Yes, well, thank you so much, Brian, for having us on today and talking about this very important topic. As someone who was born and raised and still lives in the Bronx, I can definitely attest to the fact that the largest impact of these highways is our asthma rates.

If you visit the Bronx and you ask anyone whether they have asthma or they know of anyone that has asthma, 10 out of 10, they will tell you yes. Largely due to the existing infrastructure and the open portions of highways and the overdevelopment around these highways.

When you live in these corridors, it's even difficult to have your windows open because you know that the emissions from the trucks, that's what you're breathing in. For us living in the Bronx, this is an everyday occurrence. We see that, we feel the impact through all the health issues that we suffer.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Muennig, you've written about the potential health benefits and cost-effectiveness of capping the Cross Bronx building deck parks over sunken parts of the Expressway. Tell us about this case study, your methods, results, and public health implications, and what capping parts of the Cross Bronx would look like and would mean for traffic?

Dr. Peter Muennig: Sure thing. The health impacts are one of the drivers of costs. The open racist incision across the Bronx that was left by the Cross Bronx Expressway and really divided the communities is something that can be sutured. Caps will do two things, well, they'll do a few things, one thing that they'll do is they will allow the pollution to be trapped underneath the cap, and then it can be filtered out. Another thing they'll do is trap the noise inside.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to jump in. Just to be clear, let people visualize what we're talking about. You're not talking about closing off the road, you're talking about building structures over the road so that the pollution within the CBE would be enclosed?

Dr. Peter Muennig: Yes, that's right. There are sections of the Expressway that are below grade, meaning they run underground already. That can just very simply be capped right over the top. Then there are sections that are not- they're below grade but they're not low enough for a truck to pass if you put a cap over it, and those sections would have to be built up if you wanted to cap them.

In our case study, we really only looked at the sections that were below grade. The idea was to cap those sections just because it's a lot easier and then to build a park space on top of them and that would connect the South Bronx and the North Bronx via a nice green space, you could walk through or bicycle through.

Brian Lehrer: Nilka, you arrived at similar ideas I see in Parkchester, where an open below grade portion of the Cross Bronx runs on the southern edge of the neighborhood and you've been advocating for a park there. How have those efforts come to pass, who's listening?

Nilka Martell: Well, we successfully advocated for a reconstruction grant for Virginia Park, and that was where our vision started of examining the Cross Bronx. Virginia Park is adjacent to an open below-grade portion of highway. For us, our idea was not as ambitious as Dr. Muennig's idea. We were just concerned with that one portion that exists next to Virginia Park, but when we got hold of his report, we realized that 2.4 miles have been identified that exists below grade, we started advocating for that.

Most recently, Congressman Ritchie Torres, penned an article for The Daily News also supporting for the 2.4 miles to be caps along with Assemblywoman Karines

Reyes who represents that Parkchester area. At this particular time, we feel it's urgent. The Biden's administration and his infrastructure bill really provides us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to correct these errors in the Bronx.

Just like Dr. Muennig mentioned, this is research in communities through creating a series of deck parks, reducing the air and the noise pollution, over time reducing the asthma rates, and even potentially creating a greenway, another greenway in the borough.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we have time for a few phone calls. Any neighbors of the Cross Bronx Expressway happen to be listening and want to call in about living with that as a neighbor, 646-435-7280. Or about this capping idea that my guests Nilka Martell and Peter Muennig are discussing, 646-435-7280, or tweet a question @BrianLehrer.

Dr. Peter Muennig, let me ask you a retrospective question, a history question, what would an alternative have been to the Cross Bronx Expressway the way it exists if we assume that there was a real need to somehow continue I-95 from the George Washington Bridge through the Bronx to continue headed toward Boston, as well as connecting to the bridges to Queens? What would an alternative have been if you've given that thought?

Dr. Peter Muennig: One alternative would have been to put it all below grade and cap it at the time or to tunnel it if you really needed that highway through that area. It was a big traffic jam, and it was a problem as early as 1929 actually, a report first noted that there was a transportation nightmare.

Robert Moses's plan, in today's dollars, it was well over $300 billion. Just by context, the entire stimulus in the 1990s for the entire nation for infrastructure was 200 billion if I recall correctly. This is a very expensive project that went through sewer lines and bisected roads. At the time, it would have been possible to cap it cheaply or to even potentially make it as a tunnel in the same way that subways were.

Why they didn't cap it at the time? Well, they really didn't have that kind of awareness and vision of what highways would look like with big trucks running through them and noise and honking and they didn't really have an understanding. Back then, they didn't even know smoking was bad for you. So the idea that all this black smoke belching out of cars was bad for you wasn't really in the public awareness.

Brian Lehrer: Nilka, anything to add there?

Nilka Martell: Just building on what Dr. Muennig said, these decisions that Robert Moses made are still very much impacting our everyday lives in the Bronx. Again, the time is really now. I don't think in our lifetime, we will see any type of infrastructure bill of this magnitude to be able to have the funding available to cap the Cross Bronx.

Brian Lehrer: Muhammad in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Muhammad, thanks so

much for calling in.

Muhammad: Thanks, Brian. The Cross Bronx Expressway is definitely a main artery to New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and it's doing these states a tremendous service but it's doing a great disservice for the community that lives around it. In the '70s and '80s, it helped breaking up the North and South Bronx and we ended up with a lot of burned buildings and stuff, but right now if the idea of capping the Cross Bronx would definitely benefit the people that live around here.

I have four children, all of them have asthma because of the pollution that is in here. I have a brother and a sister who are older than me, who didn't suffer asthma until they moved here and they ended up with having all kind of pulmonarry problems. My neighbors, everybody is really suffering, so to cap it up, put beautiful trees and things would really be very helpful to us and we look for a day like this to make us much happier than we are right now.

Brian Lehrer: Muhammad, thank you for your call and good luck to all your kids and all your family. Dr. Muennig, my head has exploded listening to Muhammad's story. For you as a public health professor, is there not a policy metric by which if an area has too much asthma, let's say, and it can be proven-- I don't know if it's been proven, you tell me. If it can be proven that it's coming from infrastructure that humans created, maybe an expressway, that it be closed or changed?

Dr. Peter Muennig: Yes. It is easily provable. In this particular case, we know that the pollutants not just PM 2.5, but NO2, all the stuff that's coming out around there from tailpipes is a clear cause and trigger of asthma, not just that though, it also is a severe risk factor, doubles your risk of heart disease, and this is constant. This is not just smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, this is constantly coming out of there. It causes cancer.

It's really easy to see the gradient in disease as you go back from the Cross Bronx Expressway, and that's not just a pure human toll, it also takes a huge toll on the health system in the city, which has spillover effects to other people. It makes health insurance more expensive for everybody, and it makes the city have a hard time paying for Medicaid.

Brian Lehrer: Let me see if I can sneak in one more call. If Francesca in Queens is ready, maybe we have a lesson from Boston regarding a similar attempt. Francesca, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in, and sorry to say we have about 30 seconds for you.

Francesca: Hi. Love you, Brian. We had a horrible experience with the Big Dig in Boston, but the result is amazing. Absolutely, the Southeast Expressway trashed the city and separated neighborhoods, and just the same atrocities as was done here in New York.

The road's tiny Greenway is beautiful now. It's just magic and it's nice walking through there, and you can walk from one side of what was the expressway to the other, and you can get to different neighborhoods and it's like a beautiful, magical

city thing now. You just have to watch out for the gentrifiers once it turns into a beautiful thing.

Brian Lehrer: Another solution creates another problem. Well, Nilka, because this is your home borough you get the last word today and, in fact, in this whole series. What would an equitable future look like with respect to the Cross Bronx?

Nilka Martell: Well, I think oftentimes people ask why invest in a low-income community, and because of that, these communities never grow because no one is addressing these needs. Yes, we do have concerns with gentrification. However, we want these decisions not to be made top-down, but to really have the community invested in it and at the table, helping fashion what it is that they want to see and hoping that this investment does not result in displacement? If we were the folks that chose to live here during the time of such a disaster, we should be rewarded in having to be able to still live here while this investment is done.

Brian Lehrer: We will have to leave it there. Nilka Martell, founder and director of a community-based non-profit organization, Loving The Bronx, and Dr. Peter Muennig, professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Thank you both so much for your time today.

Dr. Peter Muennig: Thanks, Brian.

Nilka Martell: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we hope you've enjoyed and learnt things from and appreciated our series which ends here, West Farms 1046.

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