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The boondoggle-prone MTA may take a “light”-er touch for its next big megaproject — after Gov. Hochul and transit officials on Tuesday said the authority will begin plans for a $5.5 billion “light rail” transit line from Bay Ridge to Jackson Heights.
The proposed 14-mile “Interborough Express,” or IBX, would connect to 17 subway lines, along an existing freight route, with a segment running on the street by All Faiths Cemetery in the Middle Village section of Queens.
The MTA opted for light rail because its “smaller, more flexible vehicles” allow its planners to route trains onto the street instead of through a tunnel underneath the cemetery that is currently not wide enough to accommodate the project, officials said.
A conventional rail build-out would cost over $8 billion, according to MTA estimates — primarily due to the necessary tunnel construction.
“The bottom line is it was judged to be superior in terms of capacity, speed and engineering viability — principally because the size of a heavy rail vehicle could not be accommodated in some of the existing pathways and you’d have to build a whole new tunnel, including a whole new tunnel under a cemetery,” MTA CEO Janno Lieber told reporters at an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
Officials estimate the new route would serve 115,000 people per day. At a cost of $48,000 per rider, light rail was the most “cost beneficial” way to bring new transit to the area, MTA Construction and Development President Jamie Torres-Springer said.
“We’re showing a very, very moderate cost per average daily rider especially compared to other systems that have been built out across the country,” Torres-Springer said. “Conventional rail just would be difficult, if not impossible.”
Transit ridership has recovered faster in the outer boroughs since COVID than it has in Manhattan — reversing pre-pandemic trends, according to MTA figures.
The new connections to the subway will open up work and housing opportunities for Brooklyn and Queens residents who currently live far from the MTA system, said NYU Professor of Urban Policy and Planning Mitchell Moss.
“The reason that this is an important project is that it brings ridership to the subway system,” Moss said.
“It improves the opportunities for riders to live on the edge of the city and still have access to the subway. Because the stations are near the subway, this is a win-win.”
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