FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM OCTOBER 25, 2018 • THE QUEENS COURIER 3
Flushing LIRR stop becomes brighter & more accessible
BY MARK HALLUM AND ROBERT
POZARYCKI
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
With pomp and circumstance, elected
offi cials 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.
Th e 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 fi nally in
compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), the federal law
enacted 27 years ago.
Th e MTA accomplished that mission
by building two hydraulic elevators connecting
riders from street level to both
the New York- and Port Washingtonbound
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. Th ey 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
aff ordable 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.
NYSCI grant to
expand its physics
ed. across state
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
adomenech@qns.com
@AODNewz
Th e New York Hall Of Science (NYSCI)
was awarded a U.S. Department of
Education Grant of $2,796,008 to expand
its playground physics program across
New York State.
Th e federal grant was from the department’s
Education Innovation and Research
Program (EIR) and hopes to increase
10,000 middle school students’ knowledge
and interest in physics, a subject that few
students have the opportunity to learn in
school.
A 2017 study by the American Institutes
for Research (AIR) proves that the Th e
Playground Physics program signifi cantly
increases students’ physics achievement.
Based off of those fi ndings, the grant from
the Education Innovation and Research
program will be used to develop and implement
a Train-the-Trainers strategy with
the intention of expanding the Playground
Physics program to 50 rural, suburban, and
urban schools in New York State that serve
a large number of students with inadequate
opportunities to learn physical science.
Th e NYSCI will work alongside AIR and
the New York Association of Computers
and Technologies (NYSCATE) to provide
teachers with in-person training, online
follow-up, and teacher guides.
Th e current list of participating schools
and districts include P.S. 64Q and I.S. 24
in New York City, Yonkers Public Schools,
Fort Ann and Greenwich Central School
Districts, and districts in Eastern Suff olk,
Questar III, Genesee Valley, Nassau, and
Washington BOCES.
Only 63 percent of high schools in the
United States off er physics, according to
NYSCI. A recent study found that only
41 percent of recent high school graduates
took physics, a staggeringly low number
compared to the 98 percent of students
who took biology and 76 percent
who took chemistry. Th e students who do
take physics in high school tend to be of a
higher socioeconomic status. According to
NYSCI, Th e grant is designed to address
this inequity.
Th e centerpiece of the program is a digital
tool that allows students to capture
and record videos to examine concepts of
force, motion and energy. Students record
ordinary playground activities like children
doing cartwheels, running, jumping
rope or playing catch, play back the recording,
and investigate and analyze the physics
concepts that have occurred with each
activity.
In addition to the digital tool, the program
includes a supplemental six-week
physics curriculum designed to be used
alongside any existing science curriculum.
Th e supplemental material contains
a teacher’s guide and a student workbook,
and aligns with the Next Generation
Science Standards and New York Science
Learning Standards.
Photos by Mark Hallum and via Twitter/@MTA
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