NYC mayor unveils Brooklyn to Queens streetcar proposal

Written by Jenifer Nunez, assistant editor
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Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says explosive housing and job growth occurring along the Brooklyn Queens waterfront are placing ever-increasing demands on the area's roads and public transit. New York City Mayor de Blasio believes that it is crucial to link this new development with the larger fabric of the city, which is why he has proposed the Brooklyn Queens Connector urban streetcar.

 

The streetcar would tie together waterfront neighborhoods from Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Astoria in Queens and would connect isolated neighborhoods to new job centers and open up opportunity for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.

“The Brooklyn-Queens Connector, or BQX, will be a state-of-the-art streetcar that will run from Astoria to Sunset Park and has the potential to generate more than $25 billion of economic impact for our city over 30 years,” said Mayor de Blasio during his state of the city speech Feb. 4.

The proposed BQX will be one of the largest urban streetcar systems in the United States – with an expected weekday use rate of almost 50,000 travelers when fully constructed. It would run along a 16-mile corridor through Astoria, Ravenswood, Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Navy Yard, DUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Gowanus and Sunset Park.

The route ties in several “innovation clusters” in which the city has made significant economic development investments, including the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn Army Terminal and the Cornell/Technion campus on Roosevelt Island via a ferry connection.

The preliminary estimate for the purchase and installation of the system is approximately
$2.5 billion. The city will raise capital through the creation of a Local Development Corporation with the authority to issue tax-exempt bonds. The city is expected to pay off this debt by capturing a percentage of the increase in property values of existing and new development along the corridor.

“The neighborhoods that run along the East River from northern Queens to Sunset Park are home to more than 400,000 people, including more than 40,000 New York City Housing Authority residents and major employment hubs like Downtown Brooklyn, the Navy Yard and the Sunset Park industrial cluster,” explained Mayor de Blasio.

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