New Brooklyn-Queens Streetcar Will Be Shorter, Pricier: Mayor

QUEENS, NY -- The city's long-stalled plan for a Brooklyn-to-Queens streetcar is picking up speed, but the route will be shorter and pricier than originally planned, city officials said.

The proposed Brooklyn-Queens Connector (BQX) streetcar was originally set to run along the boroughs' waterfront between Astoria and Sunset Park, but the route will now end in Red Hook under a new design plan that Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled Thursday.

The new route - cut short from 14 to 11 miles - is one of several deviations from the original 2016 proposal. The streetcar will now cost an estimated $2.73 billion to build - up from $2.5 billion - and construction likely won’t start until 2024, which is when the initial proposal was projected to finish.

The City's new report estimates the streetcar will save New Yorkers 10 - 15 minutes on their daily commute, which DeBlasio said is enough to justify the cost.

“It’s clearly a good deal for New Yorkers,” he said at a press conference Thursday. “You’re talking about connecting a corridor that doesn’t have a connection.”

In addition to nixing the Sunset Park extension, the new route will no longer stop in DUMBO as originally planned, but instead shift inland to Downtown Brooklyn, de Blasio said. The revised route will make a total of 26 stops in Astoria, Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Downtown Brooklyn and Red Hook.

De Blasio insisted the route alterations weren’t made to please waterfront developers in the boroughs.

“The routes we’re looking at now are not the routes the developers proposed,” he said.

The city will seek federal dollars to fund at least part of the construction on the BQX streetcar, which is projected to see 50,000 riders per day in the first year it’s open.

“The BQX is one of the biggest, most ambitious projects in a generation,” de Blasio said. “It will be a challenge, but New York City is taking it on.”

An environmental impact study on the streetcar is slated to begin this winter, followed by a land use review in 2020. If all goes well, construction is slated to start by 2024 for a 2029 opening.

A public-review process for the BQX was originally scheduled to start by the end of last year, but it stalled - and was left out of the city’s budget proposal - because the city had not yet finished its feasibility study on the streetcar.

The city claims the BQX will eventually pay for itself, but a leaked memo found the initial $2.5 billion project may never be able to generate enough revenue to be sustainable and inflation could drive construction costs up to $100 million per year, Politico reported.

Despite widespread skepticism of the plan, de Blasio remains optimistic.

“We believe it can be done, and it will be a huge contribution to NYC’s mass transit system,” he said. “The city must have a new range of mass transit options.”

Patch reporter Kathleen Culliton contributed to this report.

Lead photo by Kathleen Culliton/Patch