Looking south on the I-278 BQE at the 70th Street overpass, as it looked way back in June 1998. The lane split visible on the northbound lanes was for the now history Exit 37 to Roosevelt Avenue. A SLECO bigloop twin lamp lighting standard held court in the center median. This stretch of the BQE swims under a veritable sea of overpasses, but they're all far different animals as of 2017 than they were when I shot these. Woodside was definitely treated more generously than most neighborhoods, as far as the number of highway crossings they were supplied with and they were fortunate in retaining all of them during the massive reconstruction project that began in 1999. They did however lose the convenience of Exit 37. Traffic heading for Roosevelt Avenue now have a long circuitous backtrack to navigate from Broadway, where the new Exit 40 leaves them. 70th Street of course couldn't care less about exits. It never had one. Together with its good buddy 41st Avenue, their two overpasses form a distinctly claustrophobic wedge that is a recurring pattern along the BQE. Only a few blocks south of here is a similar wedge between 69th Street and Woodside Avenue's overpasses. Further south in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section are even more tightly spaced wedges between overpasses at Borinquen Place and South 3rd Street, Broadway and South 9th Street and Marcy and Division Avenues. For a highway crossing side street, 70th Street doesn't have much else to show for itself. It only runs the length of two blocks and one tiny stub, albeit two very long blocks, one of which that jumps the BQE. It's wedge partner 41st Avenue is more significant, enjoying a decent run between Baxter Avenue to the east and nearby 68th Street, even sporting a two block western finale as a dual carriage road sporting a center median, pretensions of grandeur that one can only surmise were planted in its head by the expressway it crosses just prior to that split.