“We have always said that we understand that the bridges need to be repaired. The question is how to reduce the harm to the local environment and people who live here,” according to a statement from the Bronx River Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the waterway. “That the state is instead choosing to blame the Bronx for its own unwillingness to meet our basic need for a healthy future feels like a bad re-run of the history that got us here in the first place.”

The state agency first suggested updating these structures in 2018. The five bridges were built between 1947 and 1958 and are showing signs of their age, with cracked concrete and deteriorating and impact-damaged steel. 

From early days, however, the state has wanted to widen the portions of the expressway that the bridges support. More shoulder space and other changes to the “nonconforming geometric design features” of the CBE would help with crashes and congestion on the roadway, according to a department report. The expressway is one of the busiest in the nation, carrying as many as 150,000 vehicles a day through the South Bronx. 

Construction options have been gradually walked back by the NYSDOT over the last year. One proposed set of plans would have built an elevated traffic diversion structure parallel to the expressway, which would either get torn down and replaced with a narrower shared use pathway or would be turned into some combination of bus, bike, or pedestrian spaces. In August and October of 2025, the NYSDOT announced these plans were no longer on the table. “The feedback we received from the community made it clear that the use of a traffic diversion structure was a non-starter,” Commissioner Dominguez said in a statement from the agency at the time.   

At the end of 2025, the state DOT came back with new options, including versions with and without pedestrian or bike paths parallel to the expressway. Like earlier plans, these proposals also widened the CBE, either by 29 and 49 feet. In a comment on these designs signed by 41 organizations including the Bronx River Alliance, the authors noted that NYSDOT hadn’t been clear about how the widening would improve traffic or safety conditions and suggested that the changes might backfire. “Recent experiences of highway widenings done in the name of “safety shoulders,” such as on the Bronx River Parkway, have had the opposite intended effect, with drivers aggressively using the new space for travel,” they wrote. 

The Bronx Council for Environmental Quality, an environmental nonprofit in the borough, was also disappointed in what it saw as a sub-par stormwater management plan. The organization also asked for possible green infrastructure or nature-based solutions to give the area more plant life or block some of the noise from the roadway. The southern Bronx has some of the highest rates of asthma in the nation and tenants of the Bronx River Houses, a NYCHA complex near this mile-long stretch of the expressway, have shared that residents keep their windows closed at all times because local air pollution is so bad. The council never saw its requests taken seriously. “They could have been much more imaginative about it,” said Karen Argenti, the corresponding secretary for the council.  

“The Cross Bronx Expressway 5 Bridges are still in dire need of rehabilitation,” added Rafael Moure-Punnett, district manager for Bronx Community Board #6, in a statement. “We hope that NYSDOT will come back to work collaboratively with [the] community to discuss federal investment in our neighborhoods to address the negative impacts of the Cross Bronx Expressway on Bronx residents.” In some form or other, the state will have to return to the topic, as it has committed to monitoring the bridges and making repairs.