Community News
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I MARCH 2020 25
But JFC is concerned that the full
fare integration isn’t guaranteed.
“They say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re work-ing
on it, we don’t really know.’ But
if you don’t know that it’s going to
cost an extra fare or not, how can
you say that this is about transit eq-uity?
Because that’s what de Blasio
and Christopher Torres are saying,”
Dubnau said.
Torres, a Brooklyn resident and new
executive director of Friends of the BQX,
attended the Astoria workshop and was
nearby the JFC members during their
demonstration.
“I think that the project’s compli-cated,”
Torres said. “There’s plenty of
information that’s a little bit difficult to
get and takes a lot of time and effort
to really understand a project of this
magnitude. And I think a lot of people
just sort of hear about it, and because
it’s so ambitious and because it’s so
bold and complicated people are just
like, ‘I don’t know whether this is good
or bad.’ I think a lot of times it’s easy
to be afraid of big, bold ideas.”
Mary Jobaida, who’s challenging
Cathy Nolan for the District 37 As-sembly
seat, joined the JFC in calling
for better bus service in the area instead
of a streetcar.
Jobaida and JFC believe that there
needs to be more coordination between
the city and the MTA’s current proposal
— which is planning to take away the
Q103 in Astoria.
“They’re taking away buses at the
same time that they want to put this
thing,” Dubnau said. “If you really want to
talk about transit equity, you’re going to
build something further out in Brooklyn
and Queens, because that’s where the
real transit desert is.”
They also cite the New York City
Environmental Justice Alliance’s map of
projected 2020 floodplain of Astoria and
Long Island City, which demonstrates
that the current route for the BQX is
within the storm surge zone.
Connie Murray, a longtime Astoria
resident who has been to a number of
EDC workshops for Your LIC, Sunny-side
Yards and now the BQX, said that
the route as it is right now will just be
“Disneyland for Instagramers.”
Murray believes that the EDC needs
to have better community engagement
where the environment is “less controlled”
like a town hall, so that community mem-bers
and the facilitators could have real
conversations about the project.
Gafvert said that they will release a
revised draft of the BQX line in May,
and will then begin their environmental
review process which will take up to
two years.
“This is a really important moment to
get people’s feedback, because we’re
actually anticipating making small
changes to the route based on what
we’ve heard from everyone and some
additional engineering and planning
work that we’re doing before the envi-ronmental
review,” Gafvert said.
Friends of the BQX gave a statement
regarding the concerns raised by JFC
and residents.
“We can all agree that the lack of
outer borough connectivity is one of
the greatest and most long standing
challenges facing the city’s trans-portation
infrastructure. And as an
organization, we are supportive of
improving all mass transit linking
Brooklyn and Queens, including the
bus service. But we also know that the
BQX accomplishes what other modes
of transportation cannot,” their state-ment
read. “For years, communities
along the route have been overlooked
for needed upgrades, deepening their
reliance on a failing and unreliable bus
network and restricting their access
to emerging job hubs in Brooklyn and
Queens. The BQX is specifically and
thoughtfully designed to offer efficient,
reliable and affordable mass transit
that rethinks how our transportation
network works in New York City.”
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