Mayor de Blasio and his EDC, luxury real estate developers and their "friends" still trying to make idiotic and loathed BQX trolley a reality

 NY Daily News

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for a shiny new streetcar through Brooklyn and Queens took a step forward Wednesday.

The NYC Economic Development Corporation, which also runs NYC Ferry service, announced it approved a contract with a consultant to oversee the environmental review process for the Brooklyn-Queens Connector, or BQX.

The trolley, which was first announced in 2016, looked to be dead in the water last April when Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen questioned whether it was worth its $2.5 billion price tag.

But the city released a revised plan for the BQX in August, which slashed the length of the streetcar's 
route from 16 miles to 11, and inflated its cost to $2.7 billion.

The updated route terminates in Gowanus in the south and Astoria in the north.

The new transit option has garnered a good deal of controversy since it was announced. Like the NYC Ferry, it has raised concerns about gentrification and housing prices.

Friends of the BQX, a real estate-backed nonprofit that has been advocating for the project, praised the progress Wednesday.

“We are pleased with the city's commitment not just to moving the project forward, but to community engagement, which must play a central role,“ said the group’s executive director Jessica Schumer, daughter of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “As the city grapples with a transit crisis, now is the moment for it to take control of its mass transit destiny and expand access wherever it can.”

The city hopes to have the trolley completed in 2029 — it still hasn’t determined how it will be funded.

Yeah, the headline above is a little bitty bit of editorializing, but I said that this was going to happen regardless. Because what the real estate overlords want, the real estate overlords get. And I don't like it anymore than you do.

Enough reasons to nix the BQX

From AM-NY:

Streetcars, America’s transit de jour, have proven difficult operations in other cities like Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Beyond the latent ire of community boards in New York, there are major hurdles revolving around nearly every aspect of the project, including how the streetcar will interact with vehicles; the use of value capture financing; and its placement in a flood-prone corridor.

Other transit experts believe the city is oversimplifying the scope of the project. De Blasio’s streetcars would carry almost 50,000 riders per day at a speed of about 12 miles per hour, according to city estimates. When you weigh costs and capacity against the Second Avenue subway, the BQX doesn’t add up, said Jon Orcutt, a spokesman for TransitCenter.

The streetcar was first proposed by the Friends of the BQX, a support group with several large development firms on its executive committee and board of directors. De Blasio has had to vehemently fight the perception that the streetcar isn’t a handout to developers in an area that is not quite the “transit desert” that he describes.

A trip on the BQX would cost the going rate of a MetroCard, but it’s still unclear if the BQX will be integrated with the MTA’s fare payment system.

Developers running the trolley show

From the NY Post:

The city claims the big-money developers who lavished cash on Mayor de Blasio’s campaign and nonprofit are not involved in the planning of the multibillion-dollar Brooklyn Queens Connector (BQX) trolley line.

Yet an insider says a developer and a high-powered advocacy group created and led by another developer are not only in on twice-a-month interagency phone calls on the project but they are driving the discussion.

Ya-Ting Liu, the executive director of Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector, participates, as does a rep from Two Trees Management, the company that came up with the streetcar idea and which will benefit from a new transit link to its swanky waterfront projects.

“They, in effect, run the call,” said a city source familiar with the project, which would connect Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Astoria, Queens.

In fact, city schedules refer to the conference call by the name of the nonprofit advocacy group — the “FoBQX meeting.”

But it is a government call with staffers from the Department of Transportation and Economic Development Corp. It sometimes includes Adam Giambrone, the city’s streetcar czar.

The participants discuss the progress of the $2.5 billion project that de Blasio began trumpeting in February. But the outsiders are guiding the city’s strategy for community outreach and identifying those who can be tapped for support, the source said.

“It’s just shady,” the source said.

Where was this photo taken?

This photo from the Museum of the City of New York is entitled, "The crowded main square at Long Island City; street car and bicyclists visible."

Where was the "main square" of LIC in 1898?

Here's the answer: