Is BQX DOA? TBD

As sure as the bill to build President Trump’s wall was going to be paid for by Mexico, Mayor de Blasio and Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen were clear from the get-go about how their proposed BQX waterfront streetcar was going to roll: on financing extracted from improved property values up and down the route, from Sunset Park to Astoria.

As outlined following the mayor’s unveiling of the plan in his 2016 State of the City, the projected $2.5 billion cost would be covered by the sale of property-value-capturing bonds. We raised eyebrows. They said have faith. Now Glen is not so subtly shifting gears, signaling the possibility that, huh, the cost of installing 16 miles of track and the rest atop streets and bridges with tangles of utility lines beneath just might outstrip the foreseeable funding to be harvested.

While the consulting firm KPMG finalizes the math, Glen is already floating alternatives.

Plan B: “Assuming it does not pay for itself . . . then we have to decide whether this is the right use of capital money for a transportation project.”

Plan C: “The federal government could come up with additional money to do exactly these kinds of cool urban projects that really enhance our mass transit network” — with a wink to Sen. Chuck Schumer, whose daughter Jessica heads the group pushing for the streetcar.

Good luck with that, when Schumer is struggling to keep the dim flame alive in Washington to fund a new train tunnel across the Hudson without which the entire region risks paralysis.

Stick with Plan A, if the numbers truly work, or move the BQX blueprint toward the circular file.