Astoria To Host Meeting About $2.7-Billion BQX Streetcar Proposal

ASTORIA, QUEENS — City officials will present plans for the BQX, a $2.7 billion streetcar that would run between Brooklyn and Queens, at a public workshop Tuesday in Astoria.

Representatives from the city's Economic Development Corporation and Department of Transportation will be on hand at the Museum of the Moving Image to brief attendees on the BQX planning work that's been done so far and what comes next in the process.

It's the first of two public workshops on the BQX that will take place in Queens.

The current BQX proposal calls for an emission-free streetcar running an 11-mile route between Astoria and Red Hook.

In Queens, the streetcar would travel along 21st Street starting at Astoria Boulevard and stopping at Broadway, 35th Avenue and 41st Avenue, according to the proposal.

Mayor Bill de Blasio started pushing the streetcar plan in 2016, after a group of real estate developers with properties along the route formed the nonprofit Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector to draft a proposal and donated $245,000 to the mayor's Campaign for One New York, the New York Daily News reported.

Spearheading the idea was developer Jed Walentas of Two Trees Management, who owns condos in DUMBO and the old Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, according to the Daily News.

The original streetcar plan was estimated to cost $2.5 billion and would run from Astoria to Sunset Park, whose residents, fearing displacement, fought to keep the streetcar out of their neighborhood, according to Gothamist.

The cost estimate has since risen to $2.7 billion, even though the current proposal calls for a shorter route than originally planned.

City officials call the idea a "game changer," but members of the City Council have asked why it's necessary and noted the streetcar's vulnerability to flooding exacerbated by climate change.

The proposed BQX route is also eerily similar to a new bus line that the MTA has suggested to connect Astoria and Downtown Brooklyn, part of the transit authority's planned redesign of the Queens bus network.

BQX advocates insist buses wouldn't be as efficient as the streetcar, which they claim would bring in added tax revenue that could pay for more than half the project's cost.

Officials are expected to begin drafting an environmental impact statement to review the project's potential effects and alternatives in spring 2021.

The Astoria public workshop starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Museum of the Moving Image. Another workshop will be held March 10 at CUNY Law School in Long Island City. For more information, click here.