QueensLink’s future cast into doubt following MTA report
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The QueensLink received low scores in the MTA’s 20-year needs assessment report, released this week. Screenshot via the MTA
By Ryan Schwach
A proposal to restart an abandoned railway in South Queens and turn it into a working subway line received low scores in the MTA’s recently released 20-year needs assessment report, making it less likely the project receives future funding.
Advocates of the proposal, known as the QueensLink, were holding out hope that the MTA’s 20-year needs assessment, a twice-per-decade review of projects the public-private authority might be willing to invest in, would shed a light on the promise of the project and get public officials, like Mayor Eric Adams, on board.
But amid the nearly two dozen potential projects listed in the report, the QueensLink ranks among the lowest. Scores given to projects in the needs assessment is a large determinant of how much funding, if any, a project is likely to receive.
The MTA outlined less-than-favorable views of the QueensLink, otherwise known as the Rockaway Beach Line rail activation, which would reactivate six miles of right-of-way rail. Advocates say the project, if built, would drastically expedite commute times for South Queens residents in neighborhoods like Ozone Park and Rockaway.
In the report, the MTA said the QueensLink “did not score well in most metrics” and described the project as “high cost and [serving] a relatively modest number of riders.”
“This project would reduce auto usage and provide additional rail connections, but compared to other projects, the benefits are average for sustainability and resiliency,” the report reads. “There is minimal crowding reduction since some Queens Blvd Line subway service would be moved to serve this new line, and there is no improvement in geographic distribution, resulting in low scores for both.”
In the report’s scoring system, QueensLink rated low when it came to sustainability, resilience and capacity. It was also given a zero out of 100 when it came to “geographic distribution,” which is described as the “change in transit travel time (in 2045) from anywhere to anywhere in the region.”
QueensLink scored middle of the road in cost, ridership and time savings, and in how it would leverage existing MTA assets, but scored very well in equity, with MTA estimating 84 percent of the route’s ridership coming from equity areas.
Overall, the MTA estimated the project would cost $5.9 billion, but added that they didn’t believe the project would bring in enough new riders to justify the cost.
Advocates have long pushed for the city to do something with the abandoned railway. For years, two separate groups argued over how the space should be used. One group supported a project known as the QueensWay, a proposal to build a linear park similar to the High Line in Manhattan. The other supported the QueensLink.
Last year, Adams announced that his administration would be supporting the effort to build the QueensWay, angering supporters of the QueensLink who said their proposal included both a new train and a new park, unlike the QueensWay which only included a new park.
In their needs assessment, the MTA said the QueensWay “would compete with a transit alignment.”
Their statement contradicts earlier statements from City Hall officials, who claimed that the QueensWay would not preclude the city from building the QueensLink in the future.
An MTA spokesperson told the Eagle on Thursday that the report merely paints QueensWay as a “challenge” to a rail project, but that its coexistence of a railway and a park is not necessarily impossible.
However, QueensLink’s Executive Director Rick Horan, who questioned City Hall’s previous claims, still doesn’t buy it.
“It’s exactly what we said was going to happen,” he said. “Not only will it physically get in the way of any possible transit use, but it's obviously getting in the way, even at the study level. It makes no sense for the mayor to have endorsed a park project while the MTA was conducting a 20-year needs assessment for the same city strip of land.”
Horan said that overall, the disappointing results match the relatively little faith he and the project’s supporters had that the MTA would give QueensLink the respect they believe it deserves.
“We set very low expectations for them, and that's essentially been delivered,” he told the Eagle over the phone on Thursday. “They have not shown any love for most commuters, especially with respect to North and South Queens…This is a predictable result from a less than objective or transparent study.”
Horan believes that the MTA inflated the potential cost of the project – QueensLink’s website places it closer to the $3.5 billion range.
“Just another example of how they really have no regard for reuse of existing transit assets to make those rides shorter,” he said, adding that QueensLink intends to do its own analysis of the score and see how the MTA came up with its conclusion.
“We suspect that our analysis is going to reveal that our score should have been quite a bit higher than it was,” he said. “We're just rolling our sleeves up and starting digging into exactly how they came up with this ridiculous conclusion.”
The MTA rated projects on a list of parameters, including cost effectiveness and sustainability, in its 20-year needs assessment released this week. Screenshot via the MTA
On top of QueensLink, a few other Queens projects were considered in the 20-year needs assessment.
Among them was a restoration of Long Island Rail Road service at the former Elmhurst Station, which the MTA found would “provide marginal benefits in an area already well served by transit.”
“It would save travel time for new riders but create additional travel time for existing LIRR customers, resulting in no net time savings,” the report read.
The Elmhurst Station project scored very high in equity ratings and in how it would leverage existing MTA assets, but low in most other categories.
“This project would not increase capacity, nor would it improve regional access, since the area is already well served by transit,” the report read. “The station does well in serving a high percentage of riders from equity areas and in leveraging an MTA asset since the new station would be built in the same location as the old station.”
The MTA also considered the construction of a new LIRR station in Sunnyside, and came to similar conclusions as they did with the Elmhurst Station, saying although it is cheap in cost, it would add to travel time for existing riders.
The next step for these projects is to be considered in the MTA’s five-year capital plan, which the MTA says is a more “informed and reasonable time period for projecting budget requirements.”
The 2025-2029 Capital Plan will be released in fall 2024, according to the report.
