Poor New Yorkers need this streetcar

Foes of the BrooklynQueens Connector streetcar Mayor de Blasio has proposed building from Astoria to Sunset Park caricature it as a sop to wealthy real estate developers and other wealthy residents who live in the increasingly expensive area along the waterfront.

That’s a willful mischaracterization. I live near the route in Queens and minister to thousands of my neighbors, the vast majority of whom are desperately poor. They — we — need and deserve the better public transportation that the BQX promises.

In fact, this is a project that cleverly leverages the real estate values of the well-to-do for the common good. Which is why all genuinely progressive New Yorkers should support it.

I have lived in and around Long Island City’s Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing complex in the country, for the past 43 years. I have worked with families from Queensbridge, Ravenswood and Astoria houses for most of my career.

The organization I founded in 2004, Urban Upbound, helps residents of public housing neighborhoods break the cycle of poverty. We offer badly needed job training programs and financial counseling, giving residents the tools necessary to find decent jobs and become self-sufficient.

For far too long, NYCHA residents’ limited access to reliable mass transit has been a a serious barrier to achieving economic success.

That’s because historically, urban planners chose to build NYCHA developments in dilapidated, remote areas that were cheap and plentiful, not realizing the adverse impact this would have on generations of residents who can not easily commute to work or school, not to mention NYC’s parks, museums and libraries.

While those living on the Upper East Side enjoy their new Second Ave. subway line, so many NYCHA residents struggle with unreliable and infrequent bus service, often requiring two or three transfers to make it to their final destinations.

We have the opportunity to change this now.

The BQX will provide our community with a relatively fast, reliable and frequent transportation option. It is commonplace in Long Island City and Astoria for NYCHA residents to spend more than 300-400 hours per year commuting to work and school.

To get to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a growing job hub, located nine miles from Astoria by car, it can take a person over an hour by current mass transit options. The BQX would cut that travel time in half, saving residents 250 hours — or 10 days in commuting time each year.

What is more, the BQX can be a game-changer for residents seeking employment in new job opportunities along the waterfront, which right now are simply not convenient with current mass transit options.

Even better, by making sure the project hires local workers and gives contracts to women- and minority-owned businesses along the corridor, we’ll see jobs long before the BQX is completed.

And our communities will also benefit when our children and grandchildren can easily travel to more schools (from pre-K through technical high schools and college and career training), not to mention to museums and other amenities in this world-class city we’re all supposed to be able to enjoy.

Some critics of the BQX don’t understand what it’s like to be cut off from affordable and reliable transit. Simply because this project would also benefit some wealthier people and developments along the route, they want the mayor to stop working on a project that would make a real difference in poor people’s lives.

I ask the opposite. I ask that he and his administration continue to support this project, which I believe will make our communities stronger and not leave us behind as our neighborhoods change around us.

We have waited a long time for better transit.

We can’t afford to wait for Washington or Albany to help us. Not when President Trump has already cut $35 million from NYCHA and promises more cuts to come. And we can’t afford to wait for the MTA, which has never made transit deserts like Astoria Houses a priority.

This is something real — and achievable — that New York City can do for itself now.

De Blasio’s BQX is not a sop to the rich