Beating the dead rail line horse

AMNY

Queens pols and advocates are still calling for new transit service on a long-disused rail line that they say would shorten residents’ punishingly long commutes, but have to contend with the Adams Administration’s desire to build a park instead.

The Rockaway Beach Branch once provided Long Island Rail Road service between Rego Park and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. The southern half is still used by the A train between Ozone Park and Rockaway, but the northern bit has sat abandoned since 1962, with the rail infrastructure deteriorating and the right-of-way becoming overgrown with vegetation.

For years, local pols and advocates have been calling for its reactivation as a subway line, specifically extending the M train down from Rego Park all the way to Rockaway, providing an additional transit option for peninsula commuters and enabling a wealth of new transfers. An estimated 47,000 New Yorkers would use the line daily.

The proposal, called the QueensLink, has the support of virtually every political figure in southeast Queens, many of whom descended on City Hall on Wednesday to renew their call for the state, city, and MTA to study reactivating the line. The coalition of supporters stretches the partisan divide, from democratic socialist Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani to conservative Republican Councilmember Joann Ariola.

“We have a chance to bring modern rail to our district to serve the people of Queens. What more could you ask for than a modern right of way, and we have it,” said Central Queens Councilmember Bob Holden at the rally. “It’s there for the taking…you have the canvas now, an empty blank canvas with rail there already.”

While the project has been suspended in amber for years, supporters say now is the time to do it: the federal infrastructure bill has unlocked many billions of dollars for states and localities to get shovels in the ground, and the MTA is already neck-deep in another project to repurpose the LIRR’s underutilized Bay Ridge Branch, which the state hopes to turn into the Interborough Express between Brooklyn and Queens.

“It connects residents in transit deserts such as South Queens, and in so doing will serve at least 47,000 daily riders,” said Rick Horan, executive director of QueensLink, at the rally. “As such, QueensLink represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reconnect the borough by using this strategic corridor for both transit and parks.”

At least the call for reviving the Rockaway Branch line has got less boring...