Support for reducing the size of or tearing down the BQE increased, with articles in "New York Magazine" and "The Wall Street Journal" calling for the removal of the highway. They noted how the removal of highways in other cities improved local neighborhoods and led to economic development. Commissioner Trottenberg had dismissed calls to tear down the highway saying that the city got most of its freight by truck and that "For better or for worse, these Moses-built highways … now the city has grown around them and it’s not an option to just say we can’t deal with that traffic." City Council Speaker Corey Johnson called for the city to study alternatives, including the removal of the BQE in its entirety, in his State of the City address. On March 13, 2019, Stringer issued a plan calling for converting the triple cantilever structure and the open cut in Cobble Hill into a truck-only highway between Hamilton Avenue in Carroll Gardens and the Brooklyn Bridge. Under the plan, only the bottom level would be rebuilt, and then be decked over by a linear park and boulevard. The report expected passenger vehicles to be diverted into the underused Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel, whose tolls might be lowered when congestion pricing in New York City was implemented. In early April, de Blasio announced that he would create a panel to formally evaluate each alternative, and that the panel's evaluations would end by mid-2019. In February 2020, officials proposed a tunnel from the Gowanus Expressway to Flushing Avenue. The proposal was expected to cost $11 billion, to be paid by tolls.