Queens Commerce Chamber Backs Park Plan For Abandoned Rail Line

REGO PARK, QUEENS — The Queens Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than a thousand local businesses, has come out in favor of turning an abandoned LIRR railway into a park.

The QueensWay Park proposal calls for building a "vertical park" akin to Manhattan's High Line along the decommissioned Rockaway Beach railroad line, which stretches from Rego Park to Ozone Park.

An op-ed published last week in the Gotham Gazette and co-written by Queens Chamber of Commerce President Tom Grech implores Mayor Bill de Blasio to devote funding to the park in an upcoming city capital plan.

"Further delay, while other boroughs see investments in greenways, is unjustified and unfair," Grech and his co-authors wrote.

The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit, first pitched the idea in 2011, and the city and state spent a combined $600,000 on a design and feasibility study for the park.

But the plan stalled until earlier this year, when the MTA released a long-awaited study weighing the costs and benefits of restoring Long Island Rail Road service to the railway, which closed in 1962.

The transit authority finally released the study, which is dated September 2018, one week after an article published Oct. 1 in THE CITY revived discussions of the plan.

Reviving the LIRR railway would cost at least $6.7 billion dollars, and connecting the tracks to the subway system to make a new branch of the "A" line would cost about $8.1 billion, the study concluded.

The study says the line would serve 11,200 riders a day as part of the Long Island Rail Road or 47,000 riders if it were instead connected to the subway.

In an interview with the Queens Chronicle, Grech said that price tag makes the transit option a "nonstarter."

"We backed both BQX and the third rail on the LIRR," Grech told the Chronicle, referring to two other transit proposals. "But this is enormously expensive."

Supporters pressing for the transit option, which they call the QueensLink, criticized Grech and the Queens Chamber of Commerce for backing a plan "that would block better access to jobs and customers for the entire borough in favor of a project which will only help a select few," the group wrote in a tweet.

Better transit will drive the economy of Queens and the rest of New York City. QueensLink has proven that both parks and transit an coexist to benefit all residents, not just the well connected few.
— QueensLink (@thequeenslink) December 12, 2019