NYC to ticket overweight, Staten Island-bound trucks on BQE starting Sunday

Truck drivers, beware.

The New York City Department of Transportation will ticket overweight Staten Island-bound vehicles on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway $650 per violation starting this Sunday.

The transportation department has been ticketing overweight Queens-bound vehicles since 2023. The expanding enforcement aims to slow the deterioration of the thoroughfare — which is in dire condition due a crumbling foundation made more treacherous by heavy trucks it was never designed to transport.

“Overweight trucks cause wear and tear on our roadways and we all pay the price through expensive repairs to our infrastructure,” department Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement.

In March, the city began a 90-day warning period, using in-road sensors to detect trucks over the limit and then notify their operators that enforcement would begin this month. According to the transportation department, it issued more than 3,000 warnings during the first 75 days of that period.

According to the city, during the first year of enforcement on Queens-bound trucks, using the same new technology, the number of overweight vehicles on the BQE dropped by 60%.

Albany has taken notice and authorized an expansion of the automated enforcement across the the state — including on 11 roadways in the city.