As worsening traffic has put a stranglehold on New York, the country’s largest city, it has moved to squeeze out cars, taking away street space to make room for bikes and pedestrians, and all but banning vehicles from a major Manhattan thoroughfare.

Now, New York is considering an even more startling step: eliminating one-third of the lanes on one of the city’s busiest highways.

That is the key recommendation from a panel appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio that was tasked with coming up with a rescue plan for a key stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which is rapidly falling apart under the weight of 153,000 vehicles a day, more than three times what it was built to handle.

Without an overhaul, parts of it could become unsafe and unfit for traffic within five years.

The idea of shrinking the highway to four lanes from six is a remarkable shift for the city, which, like the nation, has been shaped by a car-centric culture and is now wrestling with the consequences, including gridlocked streets, polluted air and rising pedestrian and cyclist deaths.