2 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 February 21–27, 2020
RED HOOKERS:
Give us buses, not BQX!
with officials to build some
form of Bus Rapid Transit in
lieu of the trolly, which EDC’s
own head said would cost
$800 million less at a Council
hearing last summer.
Some Red Hook residents
voiced their support for the
project, saying it’s a long walk
to the nearest subway station
at Smith and Ninth streets,
which is only accessible via
set of long stairs.
“You have to walk all those
stairs, most of the time the escalator’s
broke. How does that
help seniors? With the BQX,
the seniors can step right on,”
said Frances Brown, head of
the tenants association for Red
Hook East, a NYCHA housing
complex.
Brown is on the board of directors
of the BQX’s advocacy
group, Friends of the BQX,
which also boasts a host of
business and real estate bigwigs,
such as developer Jed
Walentas of Two Trees, who is
in the process of erecting skyscraper’s
near the proposed
route along the Williamsburg
waterfront.
Red Hook marks a special
case because DOT officials
previously studied a streetcar
from there to Borough Hall,
funded by a $300,000 fed-
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The city should not waste
$2.73 billion on Mayor Bill
de Blasio’s recently-revived
Brooklyn-Queens Connector
trolley — also known as the
BQX— and instead spend the
city’s resources to improve
the buses of transit-starved
Red Hook, residents said at
a local outreach meeting on
Feb. 13.
“I think it’s a fiasco, a
monumental potential waste
of money when in fact there
are far more efficient modes
of transportation,” said John
McGettrick, a co-chair of
the Red Hook Civic Association.
“We currently have
inadequate bus service with
the B61, putting this there
would be more of an impediment
and make that bus service
even worse.”
The city’s Department
of Transportation and Economic
Development Corporations
— the agencies partnering
on the project — held
a workshop featuring maps of
the proposed trolly route from
Red Hook to Queens, along
with reps who took questions
and feedback from locals, ostensibly
to help improve the
city’s designs for the controversial
transit project.
But one common piece of
advice locals offered the city
was to abandon the scheme
in favor of a more cost-efficient
transit system, although
advocates are skeptical that
officials will heed their suggestions.
“At all of these meetings
we’ve said, ‘We don’t want
this and why are you doing
this,’ and they just said,
‘Oh we’re doing this we’re
moving forward, help us
make it better,’”said Alyce
Erdekian, who’s attended
numerous meetings regarding
the BQX since it was announced
in 2016.
Civic gurus offered similar
critiques at a Community
Board 2 meeting held
in Downtown Brooklyn last
month, where locals pleaded
HELLO, TROLLEY!
THE STREETCAR PLAN
Photo by Kevin Duggan
(Above) A city official
explains the BQX to attendants
of a Red Hook
information session.
(Left) A rendering of the
Brooklyn Queens Connector
at a stop in Red
Hook.
eral grant secured by local
Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez
in 2010.
Officials concluded that the
shorter trolley wouldn’t make
sense because it would be too
expensive to build and operate,
not draw enough riders,
struggle to fit through Red
Hook’s narrow streets in certain
areas, and because of the
city’s complex zoning laws.
DOT’s press office did
not respond to a request for
comment as to how it plans to
overcome the challenges presented
by the last Red Hook
trolley study.
The city will hold one more
Brooklyn workshop in Williamsburg’s
Bushwick Inlet
Park on March 3, and plans
to complete an environmental
impact study on the project
by fall of 2021, but they
don’t expect to start building
until 2024 and finish by
2029 — eight years after de
Blasio leaves office.
Courtesy of NYCEDC
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