Blaz rolls out new trolley try
Mayor de Blasio is trying to jump-start his stalled streetcar with a new route and study.
The city announced Thursday a route and environmental review for the BrooklynQueens Connector streetcar, a trolley known as the BQX that would run along the boroughs' waterfront.
A 62-page “conceptual design” study that was released laid out the new route and vision for the project. It said that the trolley, running at a top speed of 12 mph, would save anywhere from a few minutes to 14 minutes, depending on the trip and destination.
The new BQX plan has been chopped down to an 11-mile route, down from the original 16 miles he proposed.
The route will no longer cover Sunset Park in Brooklyn — it'll now run from Red Hook up to Astoria, Queens. Sunset Park was left out because of “low projected ridership and high estimated cost of construction,” according to the report.
Mayor de Blasio, in a letter included in the study, called the BQX a “game changer.”
"For the price of a MetroCard fare, the BQX will save many straphangers an average of up to 20 minutes a day on their commute,” de Blasio said. “It will uplift our economy by bringing New Yorkers together in a new way and help us to become the fairest big city in America.”
The real estate developerhatched streetcar appeared to be headed towards a boondoggle before any groundbreaking.
De Blasio has backed away from the BQX's main selling point — that it could pay for itself with new tax money. He now says he'll have to get federal money from Republicancontrolled Washington. The project's own team had also cautioned that the BQX was unfeasible, would need city money and that digging up the streets to move utility equipment would be costly and disruptive, according to a memo obtained by the Daily News.
The price has now jumped to $2.7 billion and the timeline pushed back to 2029, instead of launching in 2024 as planned.
And the BQX's big selling point — that it can pay for itself with new tax revenue through a process called “value capture” — will only cover up to $1.4 billion. That leaves a $1.3 billion hole to be filled.
De Blasio and city officials had cited support for the BQX from U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. His daughter Jessica Schumer is executive director of the Friends of the BQX, a real-estate-backed nonprofit that's been organizing support for it. Developer Jed Walentas, owner of Two Trees Management, is the chair of the Friends of the BQX. The group has spent at least $260,000 lobbying for the project, according to city records.