For decades, transit supporters in New York City have clamored for the Interborough Express, a passenger rail line that would wend through overlooked parts of Brooklyn and Queens, the city’s most populous boroughs, without entering Manhattan.
In April, the plan took a major step toward becoming a reality, when Gov. Kathy Hochul approved $2.75 billion for its funding, half of the project’s estimated $5.5 billion price tag. The light-rail line, the city’s first, is expected to make 19 stops, from Jackson Heights in Queens to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, in less than 40 minutes — a fraction of the time it would take with subway and bus routes. It will run alongside a 19th-century freight train route that winds past houses, beside highways, near factories and even under a cemetery.
Now, in a sign of its transformative potential, the project is gaining the attention of real estate developers, long before the first track gets laid.
More than 70,000 new homes could be built within a half mile of stops along the train line over the next decade, if some land-use changes are approved by city officials, according to an analysis released Thursday by the New York Building Congress, a trade group for construction and real estate companies.
Depending on how significantly land use is altered around the train line, the report estimates that over 100,000 units might be built over a decade.
“These are eye-popping numbers,” said Tom Wright, the president of the Regional Plan Association, an urban planning group that has been pushing for a version of the route, also called the IBX, since the 1990s.
Such a surge of new housing would be substantial, at a time when analysts say the New York City region is facing a deepening affordable housing crisis, and a shortfall of over 500,000 units.
By comparison, a proposal to rezone Long Island City, Queens, the largest neighborhood development plan in recent city history, could yield around 14,700 new apartments, according to the Department of City Planning. On average, the city builds around 25,000 new homes a year.
“This is the moment,” said Carlo Scissura, the president and chief executive of the New York Building Congress. “If you’re building a revolutionary line, something that hasn’t been done in 100 years, let’s simultaneously chip away at this insane affordability crisis that we are living in.”
But the path to approving more housing around the transit corridor is likely to be challenging. The 14-mile route cuts through a complicated mix of low-slung suburbs, gritty manufacturing districts and busy commercial hubs, all with their own zoning restrictions, many in neighborhoods where local officials oppose new housing. Several stops run through lower-income neighborhoods, long considered transit deserts, where some residents are wary of luxury development leading to their displacement.
Now that it finally has the funding to proceed, Mr. Wright said he is urging the city to make a careful review of land use along the route, to avoid squandering its potential.
“You shouldn’t try to remake all those communities with a wave of your hand,” he said. “This is not rezoning — this is city making.”
The Building Congress report suggests a rezoning approach that would allow a moderate increase in housing along most of the route, with an early emphasis near stations that already have transit options and higher density, like Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.
The IBX, an electric light-rail service that is narrower than subway cars, will operate alongside an existing freight train corridor called the Bay Ridge Branch that still carries tons of cargo across the region, including steel, lumber and beer.
Unlike other major transit projects that have required extensive tunneling, such as the Second Avenue subway extension, the IBX will largely use existing infrastructure to get built faster. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns most of the freight corridor and is managing the project, said it is in the process of selecting an engineering firm, and expects the line could be completed early in the next decade. The balance of funding for the project is likely to come from the next M.T.A. five-year capital plan, in 2030.
The IBX is expected to connect a string of disconnected neighborhoods, including Middle Village and Flatlands, to 17 subway lines, 51 bus routes and the Long Island Rail Road. That nexus will spur job growth and development for the nearly 1 million people who live within a half-mile of the line, said Jamie Torres-Springer, the president of M.T.A. Construction & Development.
About 115,000 riders are expected to use the line every weekday, with an annual ridership of about 40 million passengers.
But opposition to recent housing plans in a number of neighborhoods along the route suggests roadblocks ahead. Six City Council members whose districts have IBX stops voted against the City of Yes, a major zoning initiative designed to increase housing citywide, according to Open New York, a nonprofit group that advocates for more housing.
Local officials who opposed the City of Yes plan included Robert Holden, the councilman who represents Middle Village, Maspeth and other parts of Queens near the IBX. Mr. Holden, who is term-limited, will be replaced next year, but said in an interview that he did not expect his district, known for its suburban one- and two-family houses, to change its stance on development.
“We’re opposed to upzoning the district, and anybody that succeeds me would say the same thing,” he said. “And if they don’t, they wont get elected.”
Others are cautiously optimistic about the transit line, but wary of unchecked development. Barika Williams, the executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a coalition of community groups, points to the mega project at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, where developers have yet to build hundreds of affordable apartments that were promised over two decades ago.
“It can’t be a singular focus on mass transit connectivity, without looking at affordability, business stability, community culture and how existing communities are preserved and protected,” Ms. Williams said.
Some projects aiming to take advantage of the transit line are already underway.
Jay Valgora, the founder of Studio V Architecture, an architecture and design firm, is planning a 14-building development, mostly consisting of townhouses, directly above a stretch of the IBX tracks in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The project, called BKLN Yards, will include 270 apartments, 30 percent of which would be rented below market rate.
The project, expected to be completed in 2030, before the IBX opens, could be a model for how housing can be built in sections of the city that had long been ignored because of roads and railways that divided neighborhoods, Mr. Valgora said. “It’s not urban renewal — it’s urban restoration, urban healing.”
But the project is an outlier, in that it has already completed a 10-year review process. Much of the housing projected in the Building Congress report cannot be built without the approval of local officials and rezoning, which could take years.
And without adjustments to the zoning surrounding many of the train stops, much of what the Building Congress expects will not get developed, said Mr. Scissura.
“If nothing happens, people are not building housing along this route.”
Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s transit system.
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