The Brooklyn Heights Promenade could be closed for six years under a city plan to repair a 1¹/₂- mile decrepit stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway below the popular sightseeing strip.
Transportation officials revealed Thursday that they want to slap a temporary six-lane roadway on top of the promenade, where traffic would be diverted while the BQE is being reconstructed — which would send tens of thousands of vehicles zooming past some of the most expensive real estate in the city.
It would take a year and a half just to build the makeshift thoroughfare.
But officials said this approach would be faster and cheaper than fixing the BQE one lane at a time — because the whole thing can be done at once — and it would send far less traffic into nearby residential streets. The price tag on either plan tops $3 billion.
“We think there is a huge gain by doing the elevated roadway,” Department of Transportation engineer Tanvi Pandya told reporters while presenting the plan.
Those who live along the promenade — famed for its views of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty — aren’t thrilled about having a freeway for a backyard.
“It would be a huge detriment to the neighborhood and it would devalue all of our property,” huffed one woman who lives at Columbia Heights and Pineapple Street but refused to give her name.
“The promenade is one of the things that really brings people here to enjoy it and the view.”
The promenade would have to be rebuilt at the end of the construction — although that would give the city the option of extending it by around 35 feet.
“The promenade itself is 70ish years old,” DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg noted.
The alternative is to stagger reconstruction of the BQE one segment at a time, but officials say that would cost hundreds of millions more, take at least two years longer, and divert traffic into local streets.
That approach also would require more overnight and weekend road closures, which could back up traffic for about 12 miles in either direction from the Bronx and Staten Island, they say.
And although both plans are being presented, the transportation honchos made it clear they prefer the elevated roadway.
At least one civic leader seems to be leaning in that direction.
“I think putting tens of thousands, in excess of 100,000 vehicles, in local streets in Brooklyn is simply not a feasible alternative,” Peter Bray, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, told The Post.
“We need emergency responders to have access to our community. We need to keep our businesses functioning . . . this is a very difficult trade-off that the community is going to have to make in some fashion.”
Other Heights residents say both options stink.
“Maybe diverting [traffic] through the neighborhood is better, but it’s like picking the worst of two bad things,” said Kim Wellington. “The promenade is just such a point of communication — it’s our little piece of outdoors.”
The work is slated to kick off in 2020 or 2021 and wrap up by 2026 if the temporary roadway is built — or at least 2028 if the expressway is repaired in segments.
The city will present the plans at a public meeting on Sept. 27.