A proposed streetcar that would connect Brooklyn and Queens just got a big backer: According to the New York Times, Mayor Bill de Blasio will endorse the idea in his State of the City address, happening tonight at Lehman College in the Bronx. The proposal calls for a 17-mile system of above-ground rails that would run along the East River waterfront, linking Astoria to Sunset Park through neighborhoods like Long Island City, Greenpoint, Dumbo, and Red Hook.
According to the Times, the streetcar would travel at a speed of about 12 miles per hour—at that rate, it would connect Greenpoint to Dumbo in a little less than half an hour. The projected cost: $2.5 billion.
In an interview with the Times, Alicia Glen, the deputy mayor in charge of economic development, said the system is a way of "mapping transit to the future of New York." The neighborhoods that the streetcar would connect (Long Island City, Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Sunset Park) are places where developers are investing heavily in residential and commercial development, particularly in the way of office space. And the current options—MTA buses, or some combination of the G train and multiple transfers—are less than ideal. "The old transportation system was a hub-and-spoke approach, where people went into Manhattan for work and came back out," Glen told the Times...
