NYC Grapples With a Weighty Dilemma: What To Do About Trucks

Since the late 2010s, it’s been clear that the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a key arterial for freight and car traffic in New York City, is in danger of collapsing. Chunks of concrete have been crumbling off the “triple cantilever” — a 1.5-mile-long three-level pile-up of highway decks in Brooklyn conjured up by infamous city planner Robert Moses in 1948.

A study in 2019 fingered a culprit: huge tractor-trailers and heavy trucks. About 13,000 freight vehicles rumble into New York City on the BQE every day. A tenth of them are 18-wheelers weighing more than 40 tons — some, almost double that. That’s ...