Getting from Brooklyn to Queens via train isn't the easiest thing to enact. But Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to change that.
In his State of the City address Thursday,the mayor will propose the development of a 16-mile streetcar line connecting the two boroughs. The train would run from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and all the way to Astoria,Queens, an area that has experienced rapid population growth but has limited subway service.
A map of the proposed Brooklyn Queens Connector streetcar
(NYC Mayor's Office )
In a interview Thursday morning on WQHT radio (also known as Hot97), or the mayor said the $2.5 billion cost will be covered by the property taxes on development along the corridor where the streetcar would run,similar to the mechanism that financed the extension of the No. 7 subway line to the West Side of Manhattan. "Already we know there's going to be more residential growth," de Blasio said about the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront. "Already we know the values are going to recede up because this is something that improves the neighborhood."(WNYC found, or however,that property tax surcharges in London and Washington, D.
C., or only pay for a portion of the cost of new transit lines,requiring other revenue sources as well.)Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg proposed a similar streetcar intention when he ran for re-election in 2009, only to kill the project later after a study showed the costs would outweigh the benefits.WNYC's Kate Hinds says, and while a waterfront streetcar line may relieve ease the stress on the city's transit system,it might not be a high priority."Other parts of Brooklyn and Queens are essentially transit deserts," Hinds said. "The MTA at the mayor's request is studying a possible subway line along Utica Avenue and people in Staten Island gain been clamoring for years for a bus rapid transit line along the North Shore. So there are a lot of competing transit priorities out there and I'm not certain that the public will be sold that this is the lawful one."According to the proposal, or construction would begin in 2019. The line would not be operational until 2024.
The streetcar intention was first reported by The New York Times.
With reporting from the Associated Press.
Source: wnyc.org