With part of the defunct LIRR Rail Road Rockaway Beach line on Liberty Avenue in the back- drop, state Assemblymen Phil Goldfeder, third from left, and Mike Miller, second from right, stood alongside mass transit advocates as they unveiled their plans to push for reactivating the branch lines to improve transportation for people in central and southern Queens.
With subway trains zipping overhead at the corner of Liberty Avenue in Ozone Park, local legislators and transportation advocates last week shared their vision of what a reactivated train would bring to central Queens.
In a joint press conference on Feb. 9, State Assemblymen Phil Goldfeder and Mike Miller joined others in calling for the rehabilitation of the currently defunct Rockaway Beach Rail Line in order to have trains actively connecting communities in central and southern Queens, as well as the Rockaway Peninsula.
Goldfeder, who has come forward recently as a vocal proponent of the move, pointed to the increased traffic coming in as a result of the October opening of Resorts World Casino as a main reason why trains need to be coming across the Rockaway Beach branch line of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), which extends 3.5 miles from Rego Park through the Rockaways. The line has been inactive since 1962.
“We have a problem; we have a tremendous transportation problem, and this is the answer,” he said.
Proponents are suggesting two options for bringing back train service along a 4.2-mile segment of railways along the Rockaway Beach line between Rego Park and the Aqueduct.
The first option would have the LIRR resume service between Penn Station and Aqueduct,with two stations being built at each respective location. Aqueduct would allow transfers to both the A train and Airtrain.
Meanwhile, the subway option would divert the R or M subway line east of 63rd Drive to the northern section of the Rockaway line. The subway would converge with the A train north of the Aqueduct Station and continue into the Rockaways; while at Rego Park, two stations would be built—one for the subway and one for the LIRR mainline—to allow riders to transfer between the two services.
To finance the new rails, Goldfeder and Miller said they would have to look towards getting a yet-to-be-specified portion of the $4 billion in private funding that is allegedly coming in to the proposed convention center, as well as turn to the local, state and federal governments to finance are vitalized railway.
Miller noted that his constituents have complained to him in the past about the traffic congestion problems getting from Glendale to Middle Village and on Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach; he also added that recent discussions he had with the Department of Transportation revealed that there is no plan in the works to address traffic problems in the area in the next ten years.
“We know that there are trees growing there,and the rail has to be fixed and everything needs to be done…but there is an opportunity to build with a new convention center,” he said.
Another proponent was George Haikalis, president of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, a nonprofit that studies ways to improve transit around New York City through transportation reform.
Haikalis said that having the dead rail lines running again would connect central and southern Queens to the city and serve as an economic boost for local businesses thanks to more development opportunities, and generate tourism around the area.
“We think that you have to have the carrot and the stick in order to shift people from cars to public transit, and the carrot is right behind us here, this Rockaway line that is disused for 50 years,” he said.
On questions of how a new rail line would affect local businesses near its tracks, officials said there would have to be studies on that, while other proponents believed that a reactivated train line shouldn’t have any effect on local stores.
John Rozankowski, a mass transit advocate from the Bronx, was one of them. “I grew up in the Bronx. [Trains] become a part of life,” he told The Forum. “It’s something you just get used to.”
However, their plan clashes with another plan by officials pushing for the Queensway project—which would turn the abandoned rail line into a greenway, which is open space linking parks and communities around the city and providing public access to green spaces and waterfronts.
Andrea Crawford, chairwoman of Community Board 9 and a supporter of the Queensway, was critical of the plan to reactivate trains on the abandoned rail line recently, saying that it would cause an environmental “nightmare.”
If there is enough space, the restored rail lines could also include a greenway with hiking paths and bike trails, according to the railroad plan.
Goldfeder and Miller both offered that they would be willing to work with Queensway officials in order to compromise or join the two ideas together.
Rozankowski, however, criticized the proponents of Queensway, calling their plan “an ostentatious attempt by bicycle aficionados to hijack a rail way for their own pleasure.”
By Jean-Paul Salamanca
Forum Newsgroup Photo by Jean-Paul Salamanca
jp.salamanca@theforumnewsgroup.com
Reactivation of the Rockaway Beach Branch has been turned down time and time again. It would be a massively expensive project and no proponent of it has shown that there is a real need — that there is REAL ridership that can be counted on. That line ws closed because of lack of ridership and it was passed over for reactivation when the Air Train was built for that and cost issues. Few of those living in the Rockaways commute to Manhatten, let alone midtown. If their comute was an issue they would be living elseware and have plenty of options to move to a more convenient locale. There is a fetish of focusing on a midtown commute that simply does not jive with reality or the real needs of the communities along its length. Meanwhile, The QueensWay is not being proposed just for “pleasure” or by officionados. Bikes are transportation, not toys. Parks are essential to quality of life not luxuries. This has been proven a thousand times over all over the world. A bikeway, particulalry once NYC Bikeshare reaches Queens, would provide a real, affordable and safe means of transportation for the over 54% of New Yorkers whose daily trips are less than 3 miles in length and who are NOT commutting to midtown Manhattan. The neighborhoods along the line need LOCAL transportation. Those streets are not clogged with people going to Midtown. To suggest that a train carrying a small minority of people to Midtown and back during the few hours of rush hour would alleviate the almost constant traffic problems on Crossbay and Woodhaven Boulevards is absurd. We need good local transportation and that includes biking. Moreover with the addition of the Casino and eventually a Convention Center we need to build a means of keeping the money of those visitors here in Central and Southern Queens rather than building a qiuck way for those Convention goers to carry their money off to midtown. With a bike way and linear park, Convention business can be channeled into local tourism with local economic benefits. A train doesn’t do that. A train provides a qiuck escape without making our neighborhoods better to live in, without helping our businesses, without actually taking more cars off the street.