NYC's Abandoned Light Rail Fiasco!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ค. 2024
- In a forgotten corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard lays evidence of one of NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s largest failures. Here lies a mock up of a BQX transit car.At a time when NYC’s subway system was failing-DeBlasio dropped all of his plans to help fix and expand the system and rput forward a new light rail line.
On its surface, any new transit route within NYC would be a welcome addition, but this one missed the mark entirely: duplicating existing transit routes with slower travel times and a board of directors composed entirely of real estate billionaires who would directly benefit from the 2.5 billion dollar taxpayer funded fiasco. The BQX project was placed on hold at the start of the 2020 pandemic, and Mayor Swagger has done nothing to revive it. With some luck this vaporware project will never be revisited, and actual improved and expanded subway routes will receive added funding.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard book - complete with rare photos of the abandoned BHRA fleet and other rail infrastructure, is available now at: ltvpress.com/product/brooklyn...
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I almost stepped inside to see inside more indepth and got kicked out immediately. 😂
Security people drive around there like mad-part of the reason my clip of the interior is so short.
(I did have a legit reason to be in the yard tho, and wasn't expecting to come across this thing)
It's not real, it's just a mock up for presentation purposes
It's real, if you're an Ant. 🤣
I was also hype to find this when I did
These people-mover style LRV's were proposed by myself and others over 15 years ago. One was supposed to run on 42nd and 34th streets via 8th and park aves. Basically stringing together GCT, NYP, herald square, and times square. This was going to be bi-directional, with a fully pedestrianized zone surrounding the "ring". I believe the only remnant of this proposal became what is the pedestrian zone around times square's bowtie. The global financial crash and other factors effectively killed those earlier proposals. Not sure what this here would have been used on/for.
I think this project was actually a good idea. We just need to start restoring our lost trolley networks here in the U.S. I understand that if there is any metro in the Western Hemisphere that justifies grade seperation, it's NYC... but instead of a few miles of subway, what if the money was spent on a LRT network. Then you could extend congestion pricing to the entire city and really start cutting down the number of cars.
Don't get me wrong, NYC could use its trolleys back (and elevated and even abandoned transit routes like Queenslink (former LIRR Rockaway branch)-but that's just the problem. We have at least a dozen 'low hanging fruit' transit projects that could make a huge difference, and none of them get built because of boondoggles like this one.
We have to fight tooth and nail for anything to happen. Something as simple as a bus lane or a bike lane takes a never ending amount of red tape to complete. I worked with a group that proposed 14 different potential service improvements for one of their mayor projects. They only agreed to one. And then they cancelled the entire project.
The MTA could literally increase bus and subway service on this corridor tomorrow if they wanted (well, 6 months to ramp up with employees),. This is part of the reason so many people rely on cars in NYC: service is minimal, or in some parts of the city, non-existent.
@@ltvsquad could be worse, could be California
Hey dude I'm in the city with a light rail and it doesn't get stuck in traffic they planned out the route just right where it is not going through traffic so if they can't do that in New York while they're going to take a screenshot that's a street they're not going to go down anymore so you have to reroute your car so you can't go down that route no more and it won't get stuck in traffic if they do it right are you serious
Unfortunately this is NYC, doing it right is never on the agenda. Our existing bus lanes often end up as delivery truck parking...
This "Shit Project" Should've Never Ever Be Thought Of Getting Built[Waste Of Taxpayers Money Again]☹️😠😡!!!!!! What New Yorkers Need To Focus On And It's Getting Ready To Be Built Is MTA's IBX{Interborough Express}👍👌!!!! A "Waaayyy Better Project" And Should've Been Built Sooner Plus I'm Involved In The This Project😊😁😄!!!!!! That Is All🖐👋!!!!
That plus Queenslink. It is frankly insane that Queens lost this vital transit route.
The city is changing rapidly. Manhattan is no longer the center of the world. We need new routes that reflect this obvious fact.
Only light rail can uses on underground tunnels and elevated viaducts.
What a waste so sad.
This could be a good option for queens link since its too expensive for rail or subway
Not necessarily. The cheapest option would be the one that branch was actually designed for: a connect to the LIRR mainline, utilizing readily available FRA grade equipment.
With light rail, you'd need a transfer, either to LIRR or maybe a viaduct over to Queens blvd. (for the subway).
The Queenslink proposal itself is that of an extended M train subway line - which will require not just clearing and repairing the tracks, but a tunnel connection under the LIRR mainline, down a few streets and into the existing provisions for connecting it within the subway tunnel.
Anything with a new tunnel or viaduct is going to cost way more, but I back the Queenslink plan because it's well organized and pushing hard against what the most likely outcome is going to be: a trail. There are deep pocket people who selfishly only want a trail on that route. After watching this closely for the last two decades, I'm on team QueensLink. It's either that, or we end up with another 'high line', only this one will force generations of commuters to rely on polluting buses and transfers.
OK, it was a dumb idea to run a waterfront streetcar, but if the proposed Interboro Express goes light-rail, it might have some kind of vehicle that looks like that piece of rubbish.
Oy vey. It's going to be one very cramped ride.
@@ltvsquad Lightrail has it's place - if done right. The capacity is much higher than busses, but it costs way less than a subway (not only to build but also to operate in the long run). For the medium density area along the East River waterfront, and as a connector between the radial subway lines, a lightrail (or even just a regular tram) actually seems quite fitting.
BUT, considering that this line was estimated at over 2.5 billion $, we can safely assume it would _not_ have been "done right". Elsewhere in the developed world lightrail is usually built for less than 25 million per km (~40 million $ per mile). Even the most luxurious implementations hardly ever cost more than 50m/mi; so anything above ~600 million for the proposed 11 mile route does indeed sound insane.
Train Decay, a counter to this video, which says that light rail *_can_* work in NYC: th-cam.com/video/J6YoMY-z8SA/w-d-xo.html
No one's saying light rail can't work. It would take a lot of work, and the BQX proposal never really talked about what that would entail.
DeBlasio ditched a subway expansion project he announced months before introducing BQX at the behest of his real estate developer buddies,. That was it. That was the whole ass problem. This wasn't being built for commuters so much as it was a marketing scheme for the real estate developers who composed nearly the entire board of directors of this 'transit route'.
We should expand bus service significantly - something we could do very quickly without costing billions in taxpayer dollars. Then start looking at which routes would be even better served by light rail.
@@ltvsquad, bus service isn't working that well, and the areas of NYC mentioned in the linked video I provided are transit deserts that need a rail service which _can't_ be subway. Also, before you all build any more subway lines, you all need to fix the subway lines you have now (getting a shitload of new signaling and refurbishing a lot of the stations [including these ones-th-cam.com/video/hHp_qSZmvoI/w-d-xo.htmlsi=rGXYh6vEyjzTcJAK ] is needed.) As well, building a light rail line is less expensive than building another subway line.
@@Neville60001 They need to fix that they've got for sure, but blowing $2.5B to 3$B on a duplicate line just to make some billionaire real estate developers happy wasn't a good idea then, and it isn't now.
Queenslink is currently proposed as a subway line. I'm sure anyone that needs to know more can google it.
I think queens link, IBX and others would be very easy to start as commuter rail lines for a variety of reasons, but that's literally fodder for an entire video series.
Also, it shouldn't be this expensive to build new subway lines. That's the construction industry and consultants having their dinner on taxpayers dime. Costs at the MTA are insane and someone needs to reform the whole damned thing, but that would take a governor that actually gave a damn about NYC residents and not deep pocket political backers.
Wait a minute I'm confused because this is New York I thought all the trains that ran in New York were underground subway trains this is a light rail train and I didn't know that New York had above train the City by 50 train and their testing them out for 6 months and make sure they're being ready
The only trains we have are subways (underground) or elevateds (subways running on viaducts, grade separated).
BQX was a proposed light rail but it never happened - hence why this abandoned mock up prototype thing exists.