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Light Rail Could Connect Brooklyn-Queens Waterfront For $1.7 Billion
By
Miranda Katz
Published Jan 6, 2016
Modified Jan 6, 2016
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By
Miranda Katz
Published Jan 6, 2016
Modified Jan 6, 2016
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Why take the subway all the way into Manhattan to get from Brooklyn Heights to Williamsburg when you could take a shiny monorail light rail along the waterfront that would link neighborhoods from Sunset Park to Astoria? A nonprofit called Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector is proposing just that, according to a study that was leaked to the Daily News. The streetcar would cover a 17-mile waterfront stretch, as well as a brief detour into downtown Brooklyn to connect with the Barclays Center, and would serve 15.8 million passengers by 2035, the study estimates.
Constructing the Brooklyn Queens Connector would cost $1.7 billion, with an additional $26 million per year to maintain the rail — but it would bring in $3.7 billion in tax revenue, the study estimates. In a similar proposal for Next New York, urban planner Alexander Garvin, who sits on the committee that commissioned a study of the feasibility of the light rail, noted as much:
"By creating a new light rail line in those neighborhoods, we could create an enormous opportunity for new investment...The capital cost of the new light rail line could be financed from the tax increment generated by new and renovated housing created on underutilized properties within walking distance of the new light rail line."
It's unclear whether the Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector is precisely the same as the committee that commissioned the initial study of its viability. According to Politico New York, the initial committee included representatives from Two Trees Management, which owns much of DUMBO and is currently developing the Domino sugar refinery in South Williamsburg — both neighborhoods that would stand to benefit from additional transportation, and that are difficult to travel between. Jill Eisenhard, director of the Red Hook Initiative community group, was a member of both the initial committee and the Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector, and expressed her support for the light rail to the Daily News:
“Too much of the city is underserved by our transit system, and we need to be looking at ideas like this to create a 21st century network."
A streetcar system wouldn't exactly be new in Brooklyn: the borough used to contain a web of trams, but they shut down between 1930 and 1956 as General Motors took control and replaced them with buses. At one point, however, the borough's transit system looked something like this:
The report estimates that construction on the Brooklyn Queens Connector could start by 2019. A spokesperson for de Blasio told the Daily News that the administration could be open to the idea — but given the continued delays with the Second Avenue Subway, whose second phase is now projected to begin in 2019, it's probably safe to say we won't all be commuting by light rail any time soon. Seems like more of a Shelbyville idea, anyway.
Tagged
brooklyn
queens
streetcar
transportation
Miranda Katz
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