Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at what might happen to an abandoned rail corridor that slices through Queens. We’ll also get details on how the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to spend the $68.4 billion in capital funds it is getting under the state budget agreement that was announced on Monday.
Credit…Elias Williams for The New York Times
The last train rumbled down the Rockaway Beach branch of the Long Island Rail Road on a warm, drizzly day in June 1962. The signal towers were abandoned and toppled to the ground as the unused right of way deteriorated. Now it’s a place where coyotes are on the prowl.
Some people in Queens want to resurrect rail service through the little corridor. Others see a linear park like the High Line in Manhattan. I asked my colleague Christopher Maag what might be next for the Rockaway Beach line.
This abandoned rail line through southern and central Queens is an overgrown industrial ruin. Can it be the next High Line?
There is a chance it could become a linear park, to use the term urbanists use for the High Line.
It would take money. So far there is $117 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation, and City Hall and the City Council have allocated another $37 million. But the Department of Transportation has also awarded a smaller grant, only about $400,000, to a group that wants to study bringing back rail service.