MTA, Advocates Spar Over Queens Train Proposal, Reports Show

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Transit advocates said that the MTA overstated the cost of a central Queens subway rehabilitation project by more than double, according to a new report.

QueensLink, a group advocating for a new transit and park system along a deactivated LIRR line between Forest Hills and Rockaway Beach, recently released a report stating that the project would cost $3.4 to 3.7 billion dollars — a far cry from the $8.1 billion price tag that the MTA slapped on the project in 2018.

“We’re talking about a project that would change the lives [of] so many people for the better,” Andrew Lynch, QueensLink’s chief design officer, told the New York Daily News. “People are afraid of change, and yet we’re really good at it. It happens all the time, especially in a city like New York.”

Under the QueensLink plan, a 3.5 mile stretch of tracks between Rego Park and Howard Beach that was once the LIRR’s Rockaway Beach Branch, would be replaced with the subway’s M line — extending M train service from its terminus in Forest Hills to the abandoned line.

The plan, which would connect the M and A trains at Howard Beach and replace the Rockaway shuttle, would alleviate traffic and speed up commutes from Queens to Manhattan for southeast Queens residents, advocates say.

Although an MTA spokesperson told the Daily News that the MTA’s initial $8.1 billion price tag for the project is the “low end” of expected costs, project advocates disagree, instead suggesting that the MTA doesn’t want to take on extra operating costs or lose ridership from other lines.

Another group that’s advocating for a project on the abandoned tracks is QueensWay, which would like to see the elevated area turned into a park, similar to the High Line.

Travis Terry, one of the project’s leaders who himself lives in Forest Hills, told PIXII that he questions the environmental and community facility impact of QueensLink’s study.

“The QueensWay could be completed in only a few years, cost 4% of the rail plan and would be a much-needed booster shot to the economy and quality of life in Central Queens,” Terry told the news outlet.

QueensLink pointed out to PIXII that open space and parkland is a part of the group’s proposal.

Just as advocates and agency officials don’t see eye-to-eye on the project, neither do constituents.

An Ozone Park resident named Mary Fleischmann told the Daily News that her “house would fall apart if they started running trains” on the former Rockaway branch, adding that the line runs alongside her backyard. “I have grandkids and pets back there,” she said.

Fleischmann’s neighbor Rosa, by contrast, told the Daily News that the expanded line would totally change her ability to access the city.

“I’d go into Manhattan a lot more,” Rosa told the Daily News in Spanish. “It would be nice to see things easier, see Central Park, go shopping.”