IBX DOA

 AMNY

The success or failure of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s marquee transit proposal, the Interborough Express (IBX) connecting Brooklyn and Queens by light rail, is centered on a short, skinny tunnel underneath a Queens cemetery that the MTA says requires the line to be routed away from existing railroad tracks and onto the street.

Based on a long-time dream of transit planners and aficionados, the IBX would utilize existing railroad tracks called the Bay Ridge Branch, which were built for the Long Island Rail Road but have long since been used only by freight, and only about one round trip per day at that. The 14-mile spur runs from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to Jackson Heights, Queens; Hochul first proposed reactivating the line for passenger service back in 2022.

The project is set to bring rail service to several transit-starved neighborhoods and connect to 17 other train lines, while providing a crucial new link for Brooklyn and Queens residents to move between boroughs without having to take a train through Manhattan first. Hochul has described her vision for the IBX as a “transformative” investment in expanding the city’s transit.

After undergoing a “feasibility study,” the MTA opted not to endorse building a subway along the right-of-way. Instead, the MTA endorsed building light rail, which it has never constructed before in New York City despite being in many cities around the world; the agency said this would be $3 billion cheaper (the overall plan is projected to cost $5.5 billion) without sacrificing speed or capacity.

The basis for that claim lies buried among the dead beneath All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, just across the way from the M train’s Metropolitan Avenue terminus. The cemetery opened for business in 1852, and today its 225 acres are the final resting place for 540,000 people, including the grandparents, parents, and older brother of former President Donald Trump.

Also underneath All Faiths is a short tunnel, about 520 feet in length and 30 feet in width, that freight trains under the CSX banner travel under en route to and from Bay Ridge. The MTA says this tunnel is too narrow to add in passenger tracks alongside the freight ones, and expanding it would be prohibitively expensive and require disturbing final resting places above it.

That, in effect, kills the possibility of using subways on the corridor, the MTA claims. Instead, light rail can be routed out of the railroad right-of-way and onto busy Metropolitan Avenue, turning left on 69th Street before returning to the Bay Ridge Branch tracks after two-thirds of a mile.

 This is never going to happen. 

 

Constituents of the grave

   NY Post

Mail-in ballots were submitted to the city Board of Elections in the name of at least two long-dead Democratic voters in southern Brooklyn — where a tight race is still going on, The Post has learned.

The legitimacy of absentee ballots has become an issue in the close City Council race in the area’s 43rd District, where Republican Brian Fox leads Democratic incumbent Justin Brannan by 255 votes, with at least 1,622 such ballots yet to be counted.

Fox’s shocking lead over Brannan — who has been campaigning to become the next powerful council speaker — appears to be part of the Republican election wave that swept out Democrats in parts of the region and nation.

The district includes the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Bath Beach, Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst. 

Board of Elections records show that someone requested a ballot in the name of Francesca Patinella — a Democrat born in 1926 and who died March 24, 2010 — in September for November’s general election.

The city elections agency then wrote on its Absentee Ballot Tracker web portal Sept. 28, addressing the dead woman, “We have your ballot. Your valid absentee ballot was received at the BOE.”

Another mail-in ballot was submitted in the name of Yvonne Absey, who died March 2, 2012. Absey, who also was born in 1926, is recorded as requesting an absentee ballot in September, according to BOE records.

“We have received your ballot,” the BOE responded in Absey’s case Oct. 4.

A day later, the BOE declared that the Absey ballot was “invalid” because the voter was “deceased.”