Photo Gallery: Belt Pkwy
| The top and second views face east. Those intending to get to one of the directional's three suggestions will be leaving the Belt soon after we pass the graceful Cohancy span and the more functional subway and Aqueduct ramp overpasses immediately following Cohancy. |
| The Cohancy overpass, just west of Aqueduct Raceway, is the first stonefaced arched crossing coming eastward since the Belt's own bridge spanning 26th Avenue in Bensonhurst and the first to cross over the Belt since 4th Avenue in Bay Ridge. From here on eastward, most of the overpasses will be stonefaced affairs, although this will prove more substantial in appearance than most of the subsequent bridges until one reaches the Laurelton section past Sunrise Highway. |
| Two views of the Belt from the Cohancy Street overpass. The railroad overpass spanning the Belt in the eastbound view above carries the IND A line between East New York, Brooklyn to the northwest and Cross Channel and the Rockaways to the south. Despite the late afternoon hour when their roles ought to be reversed, the westbound lanes appear to be much more hardpressed than the eastbounders. Hidden from view behind the subway overpass is a more modern span carrying the horsey set into Aqueduct Raceway's parking lot from the Belt's eastbound lanes. One needs to exit for the Nassau, then get off at Lefferts Blvd for the track entrance. |
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In the westbound view we have the
exit for North Conduit to the right. If master highways builder
Robert Moses and the backers of the original Interstate highway
system had their way in the early 1960's, this exit would've
led into the Cross Brooklyn Expressway, as I-78. Alas, the Cross
Brooklyn got crossed up on the drawing board and the North and
South Conduits have both lived on another 40 years. The next
exit after this is Cross Bay Blvd and after that it's non-stop
into Brooklyn. Cross Bay, well, crosses the bay! What else can I say, y'know? It is what it is and does what it does. North of Liberty Avenue, Cross Bay becomes Woodhaven Blvd and remains that into Elmhurst. Another neverbuilt highway, the Maspeth Expressway, was supposed to provide alternative access to the north in place of winding, dangerous, obsolete and dilapidated Woodhaven, where it's the lanes that drunkenly weave in and out from the drivers. If truth be told, the way expressways have normally been maintained here, today the unbuilt Maspeth, at about 35 years of age, would also be winding, dangerous, obsolete and dilapidated. This Conduit exit would also have led to the Maspeth. The incoming ramp onto the eastbound Belt here is for confused motorists who've given up trying to decide whether they wanted South Conduit, the Nassau Expwy or Aqueduct Raceway and have simply decided to play it safe and get away from all of them. |