The city unveiled a plan Monday to invest up to $100 million in freight infrastructure, the opening step in Freight NYC, an initiative envisioned by the de Blasio administration to shift more of the millions of tons of food, products and materials that are carted into the city each year by pollution-belching trucks to trains and ships.
The city’s Economic Development Corporation said it will issue a request for proposal by the end of the year for a private partner to work with the city to build a five-acre barge terminal on city-owned land in Hunts Point. That project could cost between $20 to $30 million to develop and would be used to deliver food items and produce by water to the large constellation of grocery and restaurant distribution businesses in the South Bronx neighborhood. The city has not identified the specific site or sites where the terminal could be constructed.
The city is also seeking to create a 500,000 square foot distribution center in the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, which is located adjacent to freight rail, and build a 75,000 square foot ground-up air cargo facility near Kennedy Airport. By providing low cost space to rail and air freight businesses, the city is hoping to encourage the use of those transportation modalities rather than trucks. Solicitations for private partners to work with the city on those projects will be issued within the next two weeks, the EDC stated.
Another near-term goal in the report was to create as many as four small freight yards along an existing freight rail line that snakes through Brooklyn into Queens. The yards would provide new offloading points for goods carted by freight trains, potentially reducing the distance that trucks would need to travel to deliver that cargo the last miles to its final destination. Shorter delivery distances not only reduce vehicle miles, but also allow smaller delivery vehicles to be used in place of large, long haul trucks that currently rumble through the city.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much it would cost to build those small rail facilities, although they appear to be modest in scope, requiring the construction of short stretches of track parallel to the existing freight line to allow trains to park and unload without impeding the flow of train traffic along the route.
The steps could take thousands of trucks off the road and create freight-related jobs.
8 comments:
So how come the Sunnyside rail yards are being fucked over with development?
And the west side yards?
This idea actually sounds good on paper but what will they do to make sure organized crime doesn't take over??
Oh the people in Glendale and Maspeth are gonna love this.
Freight my ass, no place to build terminals to process freight.
You just know thosee rail ROWs and switch branches only link to passenger and garbage transfer stations on Long Island.
Another fuckin Trojan from deBlasio to destroy 2 neighborhoods
Wow, is DeBlasio actually doing something to make traffic better instead of worse for a change?
No, after warnings going back to 2015 the The Federal Railroad Administration is now all over the MTAs ass for DOING ABSOLUTY NOTHING to improve the jammed Montauk trains, and its become outright lethal endeavor for passengers and crew during summer.
Trains so packed tickets cant even be collected, people fighting and getting hurt from the over crowding. People laying in overheads, sitting on luggage. Now with all them new people living & working in LIC its gotten outright dangerous.
Now this is my opinion of what they are perhaps REALLY doing:
Sell this bullshit to the dumb public to get in a dedicated track in knowing no stops Maspeth, Ridgewood Glendale or included so they are calling it "Freight Rail" improvement (for our own good of course)
I'm calling bullshit on this "make traffic better" PR play--This is a shill to run more express Montauk trains for the brats & money tower people. They are also worried about fines, federal intervention and some people ending up in jail.
You can start the research here.
http://www.27east.com/news/article.cfm/East-End/119566/Feds-Meet-With-LIRR-To-Discuss-Overcrowding-On-The-Cannonball-Express-To-Montauk
They would only gain the space to build the Emerald City via eminent domain. The goal is to europize the city and smallify it.
> The goal is to europize the city and smallify it.
Explain, please?
WTF is "europize and smallify"? Have you actually BEEN to Rome, or Barcelona, or even Athens? AFA as getting shitty truck traffic off the roads, Maspethians would LOVE that, there's already plenty of under-utilized (dead) space along the tracks as they exist all throughout Western Queens - stop-over and unloading points that just don't get used owing to lack of funds.
And being un-used and "dead" only attracts vagrants, crime, and those dopey idiots who like drag racing - better to have the tracks actually USED for their intended purpose: FREIGHT.
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