There’s a wonderful term for the dirt trails that people leave behind in parks: desire lines.
Cities also have desire lines, marked by economic development and evolving patterns of travel. In New York, Manhattan was once the destination for nearly all such paths, expressed by subway tracks that linked Midtown with what Manhattanites liked to call the outer boroughs.
But there is a new desire line, which avoids Manhattan altogether.
It hugs the waterfronts of Brooklyn and Queens, stretching from Sunset Park past the piers of Red Hook, to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, through Greenpoint and across Newtown Creek, which separates the two boroughs, running all the way up to the Triborough Bridge in Astoria.
The desire line is now poorly served by public transit, even as millennials are colonizing Astoria, working in Red Hook, then going out in Williamsburg and Bushwick — or working at the Navy Yard, visiting friends in Long Island City and sleeping in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
They have helped drive housing developments approved or built along the Brooklyn waterfront, like the one by Two Trees at the former Domino Sugar Refinery. But this corridor isn’t only for millennials. It’s also home to thousands of less affluent New Yorkers struggling to get to jobs and join the work force.
So here’s an idea: bring back the streetcar.
Some of this route is served — barely — by subway lines like the G, the city’s sorriest little railroad. In Astoria, stations for the N and Q are nearly a full mile or more from the East River, meaning a vast swath of that neighborhood is virtually disconnected from the subway system. It’s an area ripe for growth — for new housing, start-ups and other small businesses and industries — all the more so with the coming of the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, just across the river and linked to Queens via the F. One can imagine another Silicon Alley spanning Cornell, Astoria, Williamsburg and Sunset Park.
Right now, it’s easier by subway to get from Long Island City to Midtown, or from Downtown Brooklyn to Wall Street, than it is to get from housing projects in Fort Greene or Long Island City to jobs in Williamsburg, or from much of Red Hook to — well, almost anywhere.
A few Brooklyn and Queens residents may like their inaccessibility, but transit is about more than getting around. It maps a city’s priorities, creating a spine and a future for neighborhoods. It’s about economic as well as social mobility. So while Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to refine his agenda, including that promise of 200,000 units of affordable housing, he might consider a streetcar connecting Red Hook to Astoria.
Why a streetcar? Buses are a more obvious solution. Improved bus service is an easier sell, faster to get up and running, and cheaper up front. A bus would be ... fine.
But where’s the romance? A streetcar is a tangible, lasting commitment to urban change. It invites investment and becomes its own attraction. I’m not talking Ye Olde Trolley. This is transit for New Yorkers who can’t wait another half-century for the next subway station.
Streetcars connect neighborhoods and people to other modes of transit. They aren’t about getting around quickly (although the streetcars in Atlanta and Salt Lake City have the capacity to go pretty fast); promising prototypes are self-sustaining and wire free. Some systems bleed money, but in cities like Seattle and Portland, Ore., retail and real estate values have boomed along the routes.
Streetcars don’t hog the road, either. Part of Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, at the heart of the waterfront corridor, was recently narrowed to make room for bikes and pedestrians. A full-fledged light-rail line would require its own lane and create an obstacle between most of Brooklyn and a waterfront that has taken decades to reclaim for public use.
it would be a big step forward for New York transportation system,new thinking, finally catching up with more progressive, modern cities.
But a modern streetcar, using only a modest track buried a few inches into the asphalt, shares the road and flows with existing traffic. By providing an alternative to cars, streetcars also dovetail with Mayor De Blasio’s vow to improve pedestrian safety. And there is this additional political virtue: no permission required. Even though the mayor has to grapple with Albany and doesn’t run the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, he rules the city streets.
Credit for thinking up the route belongs to Alex Garvin, the urban planner. He floated the idea nearly a decade ago as a bulkier light rail line. The proposal was discussed in City Hall and in planning circles but languished. Updated, its time has come. The route — others are possible, so let the debate begin — would start in Astoria Park and run along 21st Street. Moving south to Long Island City, it would cross a dedicated, movable bridge to be built across Newtown Creek with bike lanes and room for pedestrians, restoring a subway bridge torn down years ago.
In Brooklyn, the route would follow Commercial Street to Franklin Street to Kent Avenue and eventually end up on Columbia Street at the Erie Basin in Red Hook, along the way linking to subways and to ferries that now suffer because they’re disconnected from the transit network.
I called Brad Read, whose California firm, Tig/m, is one of the companies developing self-powered, wireless streetcars. He came up with $241 million as a cost for the cars and installing the rails along the route. So double that number once or twice back here on Planet Earth, then add the bridge and operating expenses.... O.K., I hear the Bronx cheers. Too expensive, not important enough, a pipe dream. But the truth, though, is that healthy transit-supported development — we’re not talking about a $4 billion Path Station here — nearly always pays dividends in New York.
A streetcar for Red Hook was mooted several years ago and didn’t gain much traction because ridership was anticipated to be low. But this route feeds into a more ambitious network and looks toward growth, just as the ferries are heavily subsidized because they’re supposed to lay the groundwork for the future. Today, a city that attracts young entrepreneurs who favor old, mixed neighborhoods and industrial buildings, and whose employees like to ride bikes, take public transit and live near work is thinking ahead. So is a city that doesn’t leave behind its poor citizens in neighborhoods that have long had meager access to public transit. Housing costs come down to more than the cost of housing; they include the cost of transportation, in hours and dollars. A streetcar, in that respect, is about making more affordable vast public housing campuses in Fort Greene, Williamsburg, Long Island City and Astoria, as well.
There will always be competing priorities, limited resources and buses. But New York shouldn’t throttle its ambitions. Remember when bike lines were considered impossible? The mayor ought to lead the way here. The city’s urban fabric can’t be an afterthought. The keys to improved city life — better health care, housing, schools, culture, business, tourism and recreation — all have spatial implications. New York’s great leaders in the past have capitalized on the city’s physical opportunities, not ignored them.
Urban planners talk about how transit-oriented development concentrates density around transit hubs. The streetcar for Brooklyn and Queens is development-oriented transit. Before the subway came the Manhattan grid, conceived some 200 years ago. The expectation then was that most people would move east and west toward the busy waterfronts along the shorter numbered streets, not north and south. But desire lines turned out otherwise, and over decades the grid was rejiggered and adapted to include avenues like Madison and Lexington, and Central Park.
Now neighborhoods along the waterfront beckon again. Is the city up to the challenge?
A version of this article appears in print on April 21, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Brooklyn to Queens, but Not by Subway.
Streetcars or light rail are NOT the answer for every transit need. In the situation described in the above posting, a through bus route would be a whole lot cheaper and probably just as fast since the streetcar would still have to deal with street traffic.
Paul, you might be right. But to counter your statement I point to the Bergen Hudson Light Rail out of Hoboken, NJ. It's waterfront coverage both north to Weehawken and Tonnelle Ave and south to Bayonne are two different applications. North is very residential serving condos and hi rises while to the south the main service is to commercial and office districts where the likes of the Erie and PRR terminals once were. The atmosphere and social and business activities are all so far removed from the neighborhoods as I remember, as they had developed from after the Civil War into the 1960's. The streetcar or light rail should be part of the planning and not the start of the planning. After NJ redesigned the waterfront the light rail fit in as a natural...but it it were to have been planned first, the rest would probably not have happened.
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Paul, a lot depends on what the ridership will be. If ridership exceeds 25,000/each weekday, then the much lower opperating costs of a modern streetcar on properly installed track on a per passenger basis may make the long-range costs of the streetcar less. Note my use of the word may, since a lot depends on the amount of utility relocation required, modification to street trafffic control, etc. Less than 25000, the bus will be less expensive even in the long run.
Streetcars do attract riders who would otherwise walk.
It seems to me the best way to test the viability of a streetcar line is to start with bus service. As I understand the post, there is no transit on this route now. Put in bus service and see how heavily it's used. It need not reach the 25,000/day mark, but if it comes close, you can assume the streetcar will attract more riders and seriously consider converting to streetcar.
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Paul of Covington It seems to me the best way to test the viability of a streetcar line is to start with bus service. As I understand the post, there is no transit on this route now. Put in bus service and see how heavily it's used. It need not reach the 25,000/day mark, but if it comes close, you can assume the streetcar will attract more riders and seriously consider converting to streetcar.
We are far ahead of that method today. Planners can make educated guesses and project the transportation needs of the population in question. But if latter day results are any indication, most projected lines, light rail, commuter rail, and even inter city passenger rail, have achieved projected goals far ahead of the times planners have guessed. And if you want to see how a waterfront streetcar/light rail line can work, just ride the two lines out of Hoboken, NJ and see what developed.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't there been at least one serious proposal for a streetcar system in Brooklyn in recent years?
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
The old Brooklyn waterfront proposal handled only a small portion of the area that is proposed here and used recycled old PCC cars rather than modern light rail cars. Not that PCC's cannnot hold their own as against modern streetcars in comfort, speed, and quiet operation, but they have lower capacity and somewhat higher operating costs, specificlly in maintenance.
I agree with Paul that they should establish the bus line NOW!!
The Times’ online article has video: Riding New York City’s Desire Line.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/arts/design/imagining-a-streetcar-line-along-the-waterfront.html?_r=0
And some dissent.
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/waterfront-streetcar-in-brooklyn-and-queens-transit-gentrification
thanks. The dissent has some good points, although the new waterfront line proprosal is designed to turn inland at endpoints to connect with subway stations, a point he misses. Certainly establish a bus line now, see how ridership builds, before commiting any money to fixed rail. That is clearly the realistic approach.
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