A long-abandoned train line that cuts through Queens has divided the borough\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n
The 3.5-mile elevated structure runs between Ozone Park and Rego Park. It was used by the Long Island Rail Road to service the Rockaways until the line shut down in 1962. Since then, it\u2019s become a ruin that\u2019s overgrown with trees and filled with debris.<\/p>\n
For years, competing groups have quarreled over what to do with the defunct structure. One wants to repurpose it into a High Line-style park. Another wants to restore it into a subway line to fill in a glaring hole in the Queens transit map. Many people who live near the line simply want it to remain the way it is.<\/p>\n
Last month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani made a call. He announced plans to allocate $43 million in the city budget to begin construction on the first phase of a new park \u2014 called \u201cQueensway\u201d \u2014 atop the train line.<\/p>\n
Tamar Renaud, the New York state director of the Trust for Public Land, a national organization that is backing the Queensway plan, said it would be far easier to turn the line into a park than to restore it as a train line.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aThe idea of a rail versus a park has been a conversation for a long time and it’s really around something that is feasible to do now versus an idea on paper,\u201d Renaud said. \u201cWe have funding to create this park. It is completely designed now and ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nature has reclaimed the old LIRR Rockaway Branch in Queens.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Keith \/ Gothamist<\/p>\n
The money from the mayor would help build out a 0.3-mile path and 5 acres of parkland on the line. Supporters eventually want a park and path to cover the entire 3.5-mile structure.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s announcement threw a wrench in a competing plan pushed by a group called QueensLink, which has long lobbied to reactivate the infrastructure as a mass transit line. The group wants the MTA to use the tracks to expand the subway map, adding a north-south connection with four stops that would connect the Queens Boulevard subway line to the A, J and M trains.<\/p>\n
Advocates behind QueensLink said they feel betrayed. As an assemblymember, Mamdani endorsed their plan. The advocates said moving forward with the Queensway park project’s first phase could prevent any train line being built in the future.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Keith \/ Gothamist<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t do the landscaping and then build the house,\u201d said Rick Horan, executive director of QueensLink. \u201cNo matter what evidence is shown as to the value of reactivating this line, there doesn\u2019t seem to be anything that would dissuade them from going forward with a park that includes no transit or even the accommodation of transit.\u201d<\/p>\n
A big gap in the transit map<\/p>\n
Before 1962, commuters in the Rockaways could bet on a 45-minute one-seat ride into Manhattan on the Long Island Rail Road’s Rockaway Beach Branch. With the tracks inactive, the same commute on the subway can take well over an hour.<\/p>\n
But restoring the route wouldn\u2019t be so much a boon for the Rockaways as it would be for other areas of Queens.<\/p>\n
The old train line slices through a part of Queens that\u2019s essentially a transit desert. The primary north-south transit route in the area is a select bus that runs along Woodhaven Boulevard. A restored line would run parallel to the bus route, with faster connections to areas like Forest Hills.<\/p>\n
The A train tracks run right over the abandoned LIRR tracks in Ozone Park.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Keith \/ Gothamist<\/p>\n
Mamdani has repeatedly claimed that moving forward with the park plan \u201cwill not preclude the potential of any rail investment in the future,\u201d a talking point he\u2019s recycled from previous Mayor Eric Adams\u2019 administration, which also boosted the Queensway plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of investment that we\u2019re going to put towards this park over these next few years, it is not one that would then stop us from considering what would be a much larger scale transformation of the same area,\u201d Mamdani said at a news conference earlier this month.<\/p>\n
A boarded up, abandoned electrical substation for the defunct LIRR Rockaway Branch is a relic from another era.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Keith \/ Gothamist<\/p>\n
Mamdani spokesperson Jeremy Edwards said the city would tear up the park \u2014 along with new asphalt paths and benches \u2014 if the MTA decided to reactivate the tracks as a subway line.<\/p>\n
But the MTA has, over the last decade, indicated that would be unlikely. The agency estimated it would cost around $6 billion to add a subway line on the old tracks, according to a 2023 report<\/a>.<\/p>\n