Staten Island comic Pete Davidson blasted Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Jimmy Kimmel Live for the neglected BQE, whose multi-billion-dollar repairs will not start until 2030.
Pete Davidson did not waste the chance when Jimmy Kimmel asked if he had a message for New York City’s mayor.
The 32-year-old former Saturday Night Live star, a Staten Island native, wanted the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway fixed. The aging highway carries more than 130,000 vehicles a day through Brooklyn and Queens, and Davidson said the work has dragged on since before he was born.
Kimmel’s Brooklyn crowd roared. Davidson called it the loudest response he had ever gotten.
He kept going. Davidson said city-contracted workers stand around doing nothing amid cones, eating sandwiches or staring at phones. He wanted action, not another decade of delay.
On Monday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, the host put the question to him directly. Davidson answered without filter.
He told Kimmel:
"Yes, could he fix the f***ing BQE, please?"
Davidson described the scene he drives past. “They’re never doing anything,” he said. “Someone’s just standing there eating a sandwich or on the phone, and there’s all these cones around.”
He added a harder edge. “So, I don’t know what mob front or, whatever, who’s getting money from whatever but just fix it, please.”
Kimmel took the cue. He later brought the complaint straight to his next guest, Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The 34-year-old Democrat and former state assemblyman sat for the interview after Davidson’s segment.
Kimmel framed it plainly for the mayor:
"Pete Davidson wants to know. What’s going on at the BQE? He says he drives by it and he sees nobody doing anything. He said it’s been like that since before he was born."
The host even joked that Pete’s daughter would still be complaining about the same stretch years from now. Mamdani did not duck the question.
Mamdani told Kimmel his office had already announced work on part of the BQE. “So, we actually recently announced that we are actually going to be repairing the part of the BQE,” he said. He promised the project would run “over the next ten years: full safety, no diversion of traffic into local neighborhoods. And actually, bring it back up to speed.”
The New York Post reported the price tag and scope: a $4 billion plan for the city-owned section between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street, with construction set to begin around 2030 and stretch across the following decade.
That timeline sits uneasily next to the mayor’s own earlier language. In a late August office video, Mamdani declared the city was finished stalling. “We cannot wait any longer. We’re done kicking the can down the road,” he said. He added that the cost of inaction was “frankly, too high.”
The same video sketched the method. Workers would build a temporary road so tens of thousands of cars and trucks stay off local streets while the highway remains open. The project would use existing city funds. Officials described a multi-billion-dollar effort aimed at a long-neglected 1.5-mile stretch, including aging concrete and the triple cantilever section that experts say is roughly 20 years past its design life.
Drivers still face years of the same road. The start date is 2030. Full completion runs another decade after that.
Mamdani has spent political capital on foreign-policy fights that dominate headlines far from the BQE. His branding of Netanyahu over Gaza drew sharp pushback even as local infrastructure stayed in limbo.
The Daily Mail noted one further wrinkle. The construction Davidson said he keeps seeing may actually sit on the Van Wyck Expressway, north of the BQE, rather than the stretch the mayor highlighted on air. Either way, the comedian’s complaint captured a daily frustration shared by thousands of New Yorkers.
Kimmel usually films in Hollywood. This episode played to a Brooklyn audience that answered Davidson’s call with loud applause. The reaction suggested the gripe was not unique to one Staten Island comic.
Mamdani closed his answer with a slogan. “You know, it’s three words for me always. It’s New York City,” he said. The line did not speed up the 2030 start date.
The same mayor has faced separate storms over governance choices at home. His purge of business leaders from the Mayor’s Fund advisory board signaled which voices he prefers to keep close while basic roads wait.
New Yorkers who use the BQE every day do not need another press video. They need pavement that holds up under more than 130,000 vehicles. They need crews who move more than cones and sandwich breaks. And they need a timeline that matches the mayor’s claim that the city can no longer wait.
International disputes keep pulling attention. Israeli leaders across the spectrum condemned Mamdani over his rhetoric toward Israel’s prime minister, another reminder that City Hall’s loudest fights often sit far from local asphalt.
Daily Mail reporters sought further comment from the mayor’s office after the Kimmel appearance. The on-air exchange and the August video remain the clearest statements on record.
Davidson’s “mob front” jab was pure late-night venting, not a documented charge. The concrete problem is simpler. A vital highway past its design life still lacks shovels in the ground. The multi-billion-dollar fix stays scheduled for a future mayor’s term.
Kimmel needled the long horizon by asking whether Pete’s daughter would inherit the same complaint. Mamdani’s reply stayed on the ten-year plan and the temporary road. He did not move the 2030 start.
Other controversies trail the mayor as well. An Israeli ambassador’s call for his arrest underscored how foreign-policy flashpoints continue to define his early tenure more than pothole politics.
Taxpayers fund the crews, the cones, and the eventual rebuild. They also live with the gridlock and the crumbling cantilever while City Hall announces plans that begin half a decade from now. Davidson said out loud what drivers already know: the sandwich breaks and phone scrolls do not fix concrete.
When a comedian gets the night’s biggest cheer for demanding a working freeway, the infrastructure record has already spoken.
