Brooklyn Bridge revamp proposals include glass walkways, parks and zero cars
Do look down.
A new proposal for revamping the Brooklyn Bridge would replace the span’s wooden promenade with see-through glass.
The design — envisioning a “glass surface above the bridge’s girders,” with more space below for biking, walking and lounging — is just one of several newly-announced finalists in the City Council’s Brooklyn Bridge redesign contest.
Another finalist would expand the walkway with “planks sustainably sourced from a partner community in Guatemala that protects a 200,000-acre rainforest,” and place parks on the Manhattan and Brooklyn sides of the bridge, according to the Van Alen Institute, which co-sponsored the competition with City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
That design and several others suggest banning cars from the bridge, which was built for initially cable cars and pedestrians when it opened in 1883.
One submission from firms BIG and ARUP proposes “to return the bridge to its original state” by devoting the entire bridge to pedestrians, bikes and bus lanes.
Another car-free pitch by a team from New York, Boston and Vienna, envisions handing over space to “vendors and small businesses.”
Three of the finalists are professional firms, while the other three competed in the “youth” category for people aged 21 and under.
Online voting for the competition will take place on the Van Alen Institute’s website starting July 23. All professional finalists will get $13,000, while their amateur counterparts will get $3,000, regardless.
“Redesigning the bridge with more sustainable transportation options in mind has been a dream for years and now it’s more important than ever as the pandemic requires us to adapt our public space and transportation network,” Johnson said in a statement.
The city Department of Transportation said in 2016 that it planned to study expanding the bridge promenade, but had yet to produce a design.
DOT told the Wall Street Journal it will review the winning submissions.
“As we undertake our own engineering inspection this year to help assess the capacity for changes to the promenade, we welcome new and innovative ideas on how to reimagine the Brooklyn Bridge Promenade to create more space for pedestrians and cyclists,” DOT Chief Operations Officer Margaret Forgione told the paper.