In 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city would begin working on the Brooklyn Queens Connector, a $2.5 billion streetcar that would trace the waterfronts of the two boroughs from Astoria to Sunset Park. The mayor's announcement came after a group of real estate developers somehow had the same idea, and donated nearly $250,000 to de Blasio's nonprofit, but the mayor assured everyone that the BQX would pay for itself, thanks to rising property values.
A year and many "visioning sessions" later, Sunset Park residents fought to take their neighborhood off the BQX's map, leaked documents and independent reports showed the city's funding scheme to be extremely dubious, the streetcar route was found to be susceptible to serious flooding, and the BQX looked to go the way of the carriage horse ban: a full-throated promise backed by stacks of cash that turned into a whisper in the wind.
But the BQX wasn't dead, just dormant. The de Blasio administration released a new plan for the streetcar in 2018 with a shorter, 11-mile route from Astoria to Red Hook and a bigger price tag, $2.7 billion.
This week the city's Economic Development Corporation and Department of Transportation pledged to start presenting their case to the public early next month, with the goal of coming up with a final design by 2023, and finishing construction in 2029—eight years after Mayor de Blasio leaves office.
In the short-term, the city is aiming to get a draft Environmental Impact Statement done by 2021, de Blasio's final year in office.
“From community board presentations and on-the-ground outreach to briefings with elected officials and public workshops, NYCEDC and NYC Department of Transportation are moving forward with a far-reaching process that provides multiple opportunities for feedback prior to the environmental review phase," the city said in a statement.
Now, the city claims that around $1.4 billion of the $2.7 billion price tag will be covered by a rise in real estate values—the "value capture" model—while the rest will come from federal funding. The city also suggests that the project will create $30 billion in gross economic impact over a period of 40 years.
The construction costs are coming from the Federal Transit Administration's cost estimate guidelines, but the city has not revealed how it arrived at the $1.4 billion figure, or the $30 billion figure. At a City Council oversight hearing last spring, councilmembers whose districts overlap with the BQX route asked in vain. (At that hearing, the EDC did note that the $2.7 billion overall cost and the $1.4 billion value capture figure were "conservative.")
The EDC has not responded to our questions about whether the public will just have to take the city's word for it, or how many city employees are working on the project. The BQX's snazzy new website does state that "the environmental review process will also consider alternatives to the streetcar (for example, a bus in a dedicated lane)."
As the de Blasio administration moves forward with this $2.7 billion streetcar, and continues to heavily subsidize its ferry service—more than $600 million in city funds have been set aside for the next three years—the mayor has resisted putting any public money towards Citi Bike; there were more than 19 million Citi Bike rides taken in the 12 month period between June 2018 and July 2019, while the ferries had 6.3 million riders in 2019, according to the EDC.
"No matter what happens in the future with the BQX, Brooklyn and Queens riders need major bus service improvements now," said Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director at the Riders Alliance. "The governor needs to provide more resources to the MTA to deliver fully on the promise of its ongoing bus network redesigns. And Mayor de Blasio needs to paint bus lanes on busy streets in every neighborhood; he promised 25 percent faster buses by the end of this year and time is ticking."
In a statement, Friends of the BQX, the streetcar advocacy group headed up by Two Trees scion Jed Walentas, did not respond to questions about the value capture and economic impact figures. Nor did they respond to the question of whether they also support funding Citi Bike with public money.
"We are strongly supportive of alternative forms of transportation that help reorient our streets away from car use and provide affordable, efficient and sustainable ways of moving around the city – which includes increased and improved bus service and greater access to Citi Bike and bike lanes," James Yolles, a spokesperson for Friends of the BQX wrote in the statement. "But in this case, the solution is clear: an electric streetcar provides the best solution to connect people between Brooklyn and Queens along this corridor, both in terms of infrastructure, routing, and ridership. "
The Friends' executive director is Jessica Schumer, daughter of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, who cut the ribbon at the grand opening of Wegmans in the Navy Yard last year. The proposed BQX route has two stops that would bookend the Navy Yard, and it's also where the city wants to put the BQX's primary maintenance and storage facilities.
The first BQX workshop is scheduled for February 6th in Downtown Brooklyn. You can RSVP here. A full list of BQX events can be found here.
The story has been updated to include a statement from Friends of the BQX.
