The push to turn an abandoned rail line into anew Queens greenway extending from Rego Park to Ozone Park appears to be gaining traction.
Thanks to the aid of a nonprofit land conservation that has agreed to do a feasibility study needed to get the project in motion, as well as a petition to support the proposed ‘rail-to-trail’ program having reached its 1,000-signature goal, project officials are estimating that they may have a detailed study analyzing several aspects of the conversion of the abandoned Long Island Rail Road line into a greenway ready to go sometime next year.
According to Andrea Crawford, chairperson of Community Board 9 and one of the lead people behind the proposed greenway, the Trust for Public Land (TPL)—a nationwide land conservation—and the Friends of the QueensWay, anonprofit group supporting the building of the3.5-mile greenway, have partnered together in thehopes of presenting a feasibility study for its construction to city officials and residents next year.
A greenway is a corridor of undeveloped landpreserved for recreational use or environmentalprotection. This particular greenway, known as‘QueensWay’ by project officials, would extend from Rego Park to Ozone Park in central Queensand would link several communities with ForestPark and the recreational spaces of Jamaica Bay,including the Shore Parkway path, Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and Gateway National Recreation Area.
The rail line—which has been abandoned for more than 50 years—is currently owned by the city.
Andrew Stone, director of the New York City branch of Parks for People for TPL, said the nonprofit has recently started reaching out to private and corporate donors in their efforts to raise funding for the feasibility study, estimated to cost several hundred thousand dollars.
Their more recent attempts to acquire public funding fell through when they failed to obtainstate grant funding through the Environmental Protection Fund, which is distributed through the state Department of Environmental Protection. That grant, Stone said, would have been their main source of public funding.
However, Stone was confident that TPL’ s recent efforts will be able to generate enough funding for his group to start work on a detailed feasibility study for the rail-to-trail project.
A feasibility study would cover several aspects of the conversion, including project cost estimates,engineering issues such as repairs to bridges, possible encroachment situations, and other details designed to illustrate the full scope of the project’s impact on neighboring communities.
“A few hundred thousand would help us take alook at the basic issues associated (with the greenway),with solid data and numbers,” Stone said.
Once TPL officials finish the study, the next step would be the conceptual design process, where those involved with the rail-to-trail project would come up with a design for the greenway with the aid of public input from local residents around its encompassing area.
Work to get the project started began years ago,but ran into a speed bump in 2007 when, despite Community Board 9’s support, Community Board 6 decided not to back the project.
Crawford said she hopes that a detailed feasibility study, complete with comparisons to other rail-to-trail projects, will help to persuade previous detractors of the plan to support the greenway.
With the recent success of similar projects, suchas the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway from ConeyIsland to the Long Island Sound, Crawford added,city residents have started to support greenway projects more.
“The timing wasn’t right last time, but withsuccess of other lines (like the Brooklyn-QueensGreenway), people are realizing how valuable railto-trail programs can be,” she said.
If Friends of the QueensWay’s recent efforts to gain public support are any indication, it appears residents are fully supporting the greenway project. Their online petition asking tosupport the rail-to-trail construction, available at www.change.org, reached their goal of 1,000 signatures last Sunday.
“We’re obviously very excited about that,” Crawfordsaid, though she said her group will keep the petition up in order to gain more signatures to present to local legislators who represent the area,with the hopes that they will support the project.
“There is a lot of local interest in this project,we’ve been seeing that,” Stone said.To find out more about the Queensway Project,visit The Trust for Public Land’s website attpl.org/what-we-do/where-we-work/new-york/queensway-project.html?print=t.
By Jean-Paul Salamanca
jp.salamanca@theforumnewsgroup.com
