‘A miracle’ : Queens residents get excited about IBX, but new rail line likely won’t come any time soon

The MTA hosted a town hall in Queens on the proposed Interborough Express last week. Eagle photo by Liam Quigley

By Liam Quigley

Queens residents filed into an Elmhurst elementary school last week to hear MTA officials pitch the Interborough Express, a proposed light rail line to connect Queens to Brooklyn that could eventually eliminate an aggravating and time-consuming trip through Manhattan for thousands of riders a day.

Spirits were high during the town hall, with a vast majority of the nearly 100 attendees who showed up expressing excitement about the project, albeit, with a few reservations. 

The proposed IBX, which was first proposed by Governor Kathy Hochul during her January 2022 State of the State address, would whisk commuters from Elmhurst to the Brooklyn Army Terminal in just 40 minutes, stopping 19 times for those wanting to reach Maspeth and Ridgewood, as well as a bevy of stops in Brooklyn on the way. The tracks would be built on an existing right-of-way, minimizing disruption and the potential demolition of existing property, MTA officials said.

But riders dreaming of a breezy commute between the boroughs shouldn’t hold their breath. 

The Elmhurst town hall represents the earliest stages of the project, and many hurdles are yet to be crossed before ground can be broken on the proposal, which has been in the making for nearly three decades. It likely will take another decade before the light rail is running. 

During the Brooklyn town hall that preceded the one in Elmhurst, MTA officials warned attendees that the MTA would be required to first prioritize failures in the existing system before putting up the cash to build the IBX or other new routes like it, Gothamist reported. 

Despite the potential for a slow-moving process, the mood was mostly optimistic in the pair of lunchrooms in the Louis F. Simeone School on Cornish Avenue, where residents wrote down their ideas and concerns about the IBX on sticky notes, which would later be entered into an MTA feedback system on the project.

Dennisse Tavares, a 31-year-old, told the Eagle that she has been “waiting for project like this since I was 14 years old.”

The MTA collected feedback from Queens residents last week about the Interborough Express, a proposed light rail that would run from Northwest Queens to Brooklyn. Eagle photo by Liam Quigley

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said. 

Tavares called the IBX a “miracle to New Yorkers,” and to outer borough residents in particular. 

“Manhattan is for the tourists, Brooklyn and Queens is for the workers, so, this is a wonderful idea, and it’s going to open jobs,” said Tavares, who commutes by bus from her Woodside home to her job at LaGuardia Airport, a commute that could be made quicker should the IBX be built.

Concerns about the proposal were few and far between among those interviewed by the Eagle.

When there was concern, it was mostly from residents who feared that construction of the project would change neighborhoods along the route and require some Queens residents to move.   

“I like the idea, I support the idea, but there are some reservations in terms of eminent domain having to be utilized,” said Faiuze Ali, the chair of the Transportation Committee of Queens Community Board 9, which covers Woodhaven, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens.

Brendan Colling, another Elmhurst resident, said he hoped the MTA would be respectful to the community and deliberate in their planning when they finalize the IBX route.

“I know how the cost and the planning of these things can go wrong, so, I’m just hoping when they say it’s going to have minimal impact, I’m hoping that’s what they actually do."

Colling said he worried that beloved Elmhurst Park, which opened a little more than a decade ago, could be a casualty as MTA finalizes a footprint for the IBX.

Queens residents tell the MTA their thoughts on the proposed Interborough Express, a light rail that would run from Queens to Brooklyn.Eagle photo by Liam Quigley

“ I just hope they respect that,” he said.

“It’s a pretty diverse, working class neighborhood [and] I think the residents should be respected,” he added. “I would hope that the residential needs are given preference over commercial needs.”

Others at the town hall said the proposal’s only flaw was that it didn’t go far enough. 

Dzung Tran, 28, a civil engineer from Elmhurst, said he hopes the IBX could eventually connect to LaGuardia Airport and even the Bronx. Tran said his current commute between Queens and Brooklyn is a slog.  

“Last week, I visited my friends on the other side of the [R Train] and it took over two hours," he said. “I hope [the IBX] will be built as soon as possible.”

The proposed route for the Interborough Express. Map via MTA

While there was an undertone of distrust of the MTA among some in attendance — “Queens can’t even get an extra shuttle bus when service is out, but you can pay 40 staff for this workshop,” one attendee wrote on a sticky note — the proposal was met mostly with open arms.

“I think it’s real,” said Miriam Bensman, 65, a transit advocate who said that similar efforts to collect public feedback, including a “visioning session” on Mets owner Steve Cohen’s casino plans she attended, have felt less genuine. 

“It feels like this a real session, and they’re actually trying to do something, so, I feel good about it,” the Richmond Hill resident said.

Among the MTA officials engaging with Queens denizens at the town hall was Sean Fitzpatrick, the deputy chief of staff for the MTA’s construction department who told attendees at the Brooklyn town hall that the IBX wasn’t at the top of the MTA’s priority list. 

When asked if he threw cold water on the excitement around the project at the first town hall in Brooklyn last week he appeared to walk back his previous plea to tamper expectations. 

“We are really excited about this project and think it’s going to be a transformative link between Brooklyn and Queens and we’re excited to be at this stage of it,” Fitzpatrick said. “[We are] seeing a lot of enthusiasm, and we’re looking forward to continuing it.”

And it wasn’t just the IBX that was causing a buzz at the town hall. A cadre of supporters hoping to make another Queens transit project called the QueensWay into reality were in attendance, but their vision, for now, seems dead in the water. 

Mayor Eric Adams has already allocated funds to turn the abandoned tracks that cut through Forest Park toward the Rockaway Peninsula into a linear park in the fashion of Manhattan’s Highline, snuffing out dreams of a new transit link.

But few details regarding the IBX or the QueensWay have been set in stone.  

The next IBX town hall will be in Sunset Park on Nov. 30th, and more information is available at new.mta.info/project/interborough-express.