The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is giving New Yorkers an early look at the vision for a $5.5 billion, 14-mile light-rail project to connect Brooklyn and Queens.
Transit officials are hosting a series of public open houses in April and May on preliminary designs for the Interborough Express, a rail link between Bay Ridge and Jackson Heights that’s designed to give New Yorkers more options to directly commute between the boroughs. The line, which Gov. Kathy Hochul endorsed in 2022 as a priority project, would be a significant upgrade to a mass transit system that has historically prioritized commutes into and out of Manhattan.
Plans call for the light rail line to have 19 stops and link up with 17 subway lines and the Long Island Rail Road — and serve roughly 115,000 riders daily on weekdays. It would utilize existing freight tracks that are owned by the Florida-based CSX, a juggernaut in U.S. railroad freight, and by the Long Island Rail Road. Freight trains will continue to operate uninterrupted adjacent to the light rail line.
Upcoming open houses on the project will be held April 3 at the South Shore High School in Canarsie, April 22 at Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, and May 8 at the Renaissance Charter School in Jackson Heights. All are set for 6 p.m.
The MTA’s public push for the project comes as funding to build it remains up in the air. Last year’s state budget allocated $52 million for engineering and design, and the project landed an additional $15 million through a federal transportation grant. The authority has earmarked $2.75 billion to construct the light rail line as part of its proposed five-year infrastructure investment plan it is pitching to state lawmakers.
Early MTA designs for the system show a modern, outdoor line that will mostly operate on sunken tracks below street level rather than on elevated tracks, like several existing subway lines. New, sleek light rail trains will have fewer cars than the standard 10-car subway train.
Transit officials have planned the Interborough Expresses’ nearly two dozen stations to be adjacent to other subway lines for easy access. The MTA says exactly how the light rail line will link with existing subway lines has yet to be designed, but the project will likely build new connections between underground and elevated subway stations. That includes at stops like the light rail route’s Atlantic Avenue station in Brooklyn, which would enable riders to transfer to the neighboring A, C, J, Z and L subway lines or the Long Island Rail Road, and the line’s Roosevelt Avenue station in Queens for connections to the E, M, F, R and 7 subway lines.
The MTA’s appeal to Albany for capital funding is no sure thing, and it also is likely to face an uphill battle in securing billions of federal transit dollars for the project under the Trump administration.
Charlie Ganz, an Interborough Express project manager, acknowledged the project’s federal funding challenges at the Thursday open house, but reiterated the MTA’s commitment to the light rail project.
“Less money for capital, infrastructure investments is not great,” said Ganz. “But we will figure out a path forward.”
So far MTA has mapped out its designs for the project in-house, but the agency plans to hire a consultant for engineering and design work sometime this spring.
The initial phase of engineering and design will span a year and a half, while the MTA simultaneously works to get federal officials to sign off on environmental reviews for the line. Once completed, the work will enable the authority to compete for federal dollars to finance the project, and then move on to finding a builder to demolish existing structures, construct new tunnels and bridges and build out the line’s stations.
The MTA said it currently doesn’t have an estimated timeline for the project’s completion.
