From the Daily News:Queens residents who have lobbied to see trains again chugging along the defunct Rockaway Beach Rail line got a shot of hope last week when the MTA listed its reactivation as a possibility for future expansion.
Tucked into the agency’s lengthy 20-Year Capital Needs Assessment is a suggestion that restoring the line could help link riders from Howard Beach and Ozone Park to buses and subways in Woodhaven.
Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder and others have long argued that fixing up the 3.5-mile abandoned line — which runs from Rego Park to Ozone Park — would provide south Queens residents with a faster way around the the borough and into the city.
Trains stopped running along the line about 50 years ago.
“I think it shows the MTA recognizes the best way to plan for the future is to look at the existing right of ways,” said Goldfeder (D-Rockaway).
“We will have to fight for the funding in Albany to make it a reality,” he added.
20 comments:
That would be good, that part of Queens seems to be a bit isolated and it needs some good transportation out there. The subways around there take way too long to get to Manhattan.
I give them another 50 years to make a move. By then south Queens will be under water so a ferry service would be more realistic.
...leaving aside that this right-of-way makes little sense for the 21st century...
re: .1, the speed of the trains is constrained by the tracks, curves, and the basic physics of acceleration and deceleration. I don't if that can be improved.
While Goldfeder supports reviving the train line, at its northern end, Koslowitz, Katz and Hevesi oppose it. You can't fight County.
Back in the 50's and 60's they predicted we would all have flying cars just like the Jetsons, and everyone would get where they are going at 500 mph instead of the average 5 mph. What ever happened wid dat?
The MTA isn't going to do shiat with that. They are just posturing so they don't lose the real estate to the Queensway.
Its posturing. "Hey, no, dont take it, we still need it!"
I remember driving past this line as a kid-- already abandoned 20 years by the 1970s. I never understood why it was abandoned, and why it couldn't be restarted-- even back then-- as the connection to JFK.
People are sure ready to offer opinions whether they know what they're talking about or not! I live near the LIRR tracks where the abandoned tracks terminate at a level suited to passing UNDER the LIRR, BUT there are now apartment houses on the other side of the LIRR tracks. So how will this line hook up to ANYTHING??? Where would the stations be? Are they going to commandeer people's BACKYARDS to create stations? It's hilarious. All they have to do is walk to the corner of Burns and Thornton and look with their own eyes. You don't need a big study or anything. It can't be done.
There have been no apartment buildings built in the unused right of way. There were stations along this line previously that can be restored.
Excuse me but there ARE buildings directly across the LIRR from where the abandoned tracks end. I can see them right now, with my eyes. As for stations. there are no stations or remnants of stations or room to build stations from as far down as the Stop n Shop up to the LIRR. That I know, because, again, I have seen it with mine own eyes.
The abandoned tracks end there because they hook up to the main line there. The apartments were not built in the right of way. There was a Parkside station at Metropolitan Avenue.
Anon No. 6: These tracks and the real estate don't belong to the MTA. They've been city property for close to 30 years.
1) You heard it here first.....this will be NEITHER a walkway NOR a rail line for the next 20 years. You all need to grow up and realize that nothing constructive will be done either way.
2) On another topic, although I love this blog, why can't some of the hundreds of "anonymous" contributors use a name? Using your first name does not require that much courage.
What "they" should really do is take down the unused overpasses and sell the land to the adjoining landowners. Get rid of this blight once and for all.
This land should be redeployed for a short haul subway line to serve the areas south which are desperate for service and those along this route to Rego Park. If there is something in the way - guess what? Down it goes via eminenant domain if that's what the City or MTA decides. This land is impossible to recreate thus use it for regardless of curves - will straighten them out too - knock down that Forest Hills Tudor - lol! The last thing we need to spend money on is a highline Park on the site - who will patrol it? Anyhow the neighboring houses will ahve to put up with the noise since they knew what they were buying their own property!
Nothing will ever happen to this line. It will remain exactly as it is for the next 50 years.
Build it and they will come, build it and they will come. Chant this mantra every night as you lay in your beds and see what happens!
too bad that this is just so Goldfeder
can get his do nothing mug in the papers.
ask the people in his district what he has done for them. not much.
He's too busy getting media attention.
almost as bad as the man he replaced.
Weiner.
Anon No. 18: He didn't replace Weiner. He replaced Audrey Pheffer.
Well then, maybe Pheffer Should have gotten her mug in the press a little more and we'd remember her Better!
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