‘Hell. Worst traffic jam in Brooklyn.’ BQE Exit 31 becomes viral song
The song pokes fun at drivers cutting across multiple lanes, traffic backing up along the BQE and the chaos where the exit meets Wythe Avenue.
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If you’ve ever been stuck at Exit 31 on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, you probably don’t need an explanation for the frustration.
Now, the traffic nightmare has its own soundtrack.
Andrew Rose Gregory, of the Gregory Brothers, turned the infamous exit into a comedic song that has racked up more than a million views and thousands of likes online.
The song pokes fun at drivers cutting across multiple lanes, traffic backing up along the BQE and the chaos where the exit meets Wythe Avenue.
“Chaotic neutral cutters," he called them in his song. Cutters that “squeeze past the poor suckers” at the end of the exit.
Gregory says the problem comes down to competing traffic patterns.
“The problem is that local drivers need to go left, but the interstate traffic mostly needs to go straight," he said. "Really, I think so much of this could be fixed if just the right lane had a left turn signal and the left lane had a straight signal.”
Gregory and his brother have been writing comedic songs for about 20 years. They're the same group behind the viral "It's corn" song on TikTok. The idea for the Exit 31 song came to Gregory after he realized he would eventually have to drive through Exit 31 himself.
“Oh my God, in six hours I’m gonna have to get off on Exit 31," he said. "Ruined my day.”
The New York State Department of Transportation says it “shares the community’s frustration with frequent backups at Exit 31… and we are taking action to fix this traffic headache by progressing a project to enhance safety and improve traffic flow.”
DOT says the project is in its final design stage. Plans call for reconfiguring the exit ramp to two lanes, physically separating traffic at Wythe Avenue, optimizing signal timings and installing pedestrian curb extensions.
But drivers will have to wait.
Construction is not expected to begin until 2028.
Gregory says he submitted his own plan to improve the roadway during the COVID-19 pandemic and was told the issue would be resolved by 2023.
“If they shared the frustration that the people at this exit shared, the work would have been done in 2023, which is the year they said in 2021,” Gregory says.
Until then, drivers stuck at Exit 31 have a new way to pass the time: turn up the song.
There’s even a remix.
