8
L E H A V R E
N E W S
N O V E M B E R Flushing LIRR stop becomes
brighter & more accessible
8 LEHAVRE COURIER | NOVEMBER 2018 | WWW.QNS.COM
Photos by Mark Hallum and via Twitter/@MTA
BY MARK HALLUM AND
ROBERT POZARYCKI
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
With pomp and circumstance, elected
officials and Flushing community
leaders celebrated on Oct. 18 the
completion of the new and improved
Flushing-Main Street station on the
Long Island Rail Road.
The lengthy overhaul included
everything from new LED lighting on
the platforms and reconstructed staircases.
But the biggest aspect of the
entire project is that the station is finally
in compliance with the Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA), the federal
law enacted 27 years ago.
The MTA accomplished that mission
by building two hydraulic elevators
connecting riders from street
level to both the New York- and Port
Washington-bound platforms.
Improvements to Flushing-Main
Street were among 40 other LIRR stations
receiving overhauls totaling $5.6
billion in state funds announced by
Governor Andrew Cuomo's in August
2017.
Dee Barrett walks with a cane and
has travailed the stairs of the Flushing-
Main Street station for years on his
bi-monthly trips between Queens
and his home in Pennsylvania. Even
though it took the MTA decades to
make the station ADA compliant,
Barrett does not hold it against the the
state agency.
"Unlike other places that don't do
anything, I'm still pretty impressed
with the MTA. They move how many
millions of people a day?" said Barrett,
who also takes New Jersey Transit to
get to Flushing.
Former Borough President Claire
Shulman said the reinvigorated train
station paired with the new housing
development nearly completed adjacent
the tracks on the south side will
release the dependency of Queens
residents on cars.
"What it really does is it improves
transportation, it increases housing and
it gets rid of the cars," said Shulman,
who served as borough president from
1986 to 2002 and now heads the
Flushing Willets Point Corona Local
Development Corporation.
One Flushing Housing has 231
affordable units and is another upgrade
for the neighborhood having previously
only been a parking lot when work
began in 2016.
Another critical improvement the
renovation brings is easy access from
westbound to eastbound tracks.
If a passenger needs to switch platforms,
they no longer have to go down
to Main Street and around the corner
to 40th Road, or vice versa, to get to
the opposite side. A new ground-level
passageway gives LIRR customers a
shortcut.
"It's been here since 1854 and in
1913 the station was elevated above
street level, so it's been part of this
landscape and this environment, a
transportation outlet for residents and
businesses for more than 160 years,"
LIRR President Philip Eng said. "Out
of our 124 stations across Long Island
Rail Road, Flushing-Main Street is
one of our 50th busiest stations across
the system."
Eng added that about 2,200 straphangers
pass through the Flushing-
Main Street station on an average day.
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