This is a guest post from Dr. Jonathan English (@EnglishRail), a subway historian with a PhD in Transit Planning from Columbia University. Enjoy!
The Interborough Express could be the biggest new transit project in New York City in decades.
It is a proposed new rail line that forms a kind of partial loop line, arcing through Queens and Brooklyn. It would run from an interchange with the 7 and Queens Boulevard trains in Jackson Heights, Queens, through the Broadway Junction interchange in East New York, all the way to Bay Ridge. It would only be the second rail transit route that doesn’t touch Manhattan and would have interchanges with 17 subway lines plus the LIRR. It’ll provide a way from people on the outer ends of various subway lines to travel to the outer ends of other lines, potentially avoiding lengthy detours or slow bus trips. For example, a person from Canarsie going to Brooklyn College could take a short ride on the L to the IBX and then ride right to campus.
All in all, it would be a pretty significant project, connecting a number of neighborhoods that are poorly linked to the subway while also providing a new crosstown route that enables people to avoid going through Manhattan. Though it wouldn’t attract the ridership of Manhattan lines like Second Avenue, it would still provide a big boost for long-neglected parts of the city.
New York City still has one of the world’s most extensive subway systems. But, remarkably, nearly all of it was built in the first four decades of the twentieth century—subway construction largely stopped after the Second World War. Why? For one thing, ridership was declining (it has never since reached its 1946 peak) and it was getting more expensive and difficult to build. Before the war, subways would be built into lightly developed areas (even farmland!) of the outer boroughs, and apartment buildings and townhouses would quickly sprout up alongside. It was cheap and easy to build through undeveloped land, and many new lines were built above ground. But by the 30s, people had grown less tolerant of the noise and visual impact of elevated trains. Compounding the problem, after the war, most of the population growth was taking place outside the city limits, which were mostly built out. It happened alongside highways (which could receive 90% federal subsidy), rather than subways.
As a result of this, New York has been left with a subway system frozen in amber, designed to serve travel needs of a century ago. Some of these remain important—there are plenty of people still commuting to midtown or travelling around Manhattan. Others are completely anachronistic, like the capacity to take millions of people to beach days on Coney Island. Fundamentally, it remains a very radial system, largely intended to get people in and out of Manhattan. And, partly as a result, New York City itself remains a relatively monocentric city, with a huge proportion of economic activity concentrated in Manhattan south of Central Park. Historic subcentres like downtown Brooklyn or the Hub in the Bronx have had limited growth over the last eight decades.
It has long been the goal of New York City to make other parts of the city more of a destination, if for no other reason than to divert people away from the crowded Manhattan bridges and subways. Though there have been significant successes—the redevelopment of Long Island City, the gentrification of the L train corridor, and the recent construction in downtown Brooklyn are notable examples. But the problem has long been that other parts of the city simply aren’t very accessible from the city and region as a whole.
Now how is it possible to build a long new rail line in a city that is well known for having the highest transit infrastructure costs on the planet? Well, for one, it’s because they’re going back to the future and building above ground. The IBX will use an existing freight rail right-of-way, saving massively compared with the deep tunnels that have been needed for recent subway projects like Second Avenue and the 7 Train extension.
But in a big break from the past, it will use light rail trains unlike anything that has existed in New York since the removal of the city’s trams. The MTA’s choice of light rail technology is largely driven by the desire to avoid the need to widen a narrow segment of the right-of-way at the All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, where it passes through a tunnel used by freight traffic. Instead, the trains will rise out of the trench and run along a short on-street segment.
While this is a seemingly clever solution to a problem that avoids the need for an expensive tunnel, it comes at a significant long-term cost. It inserts a permanent choke point in the middle of the line, slowing journeys and impacting reliability. It also permanently increases rolling stock and operating costs, forcing the use of vehicles suitable for street running and preventing any use of automation. There may even be other ways to solve the problem—there are precedents in North America, like Waterloo Region’s Ion LRT, of light rail vehicles sharing track for a short distance with relatively infrequent mainline freight trains.
Still, the whole design of the study only considered three possible modes: conventional LRT, BRT, and what they called “conventional rail,” meaning FRA-compliant trains configured like subway trains. Significantly, they never considered increasingly popular automated light metro trains, which would be especially well-suited to this kind of operation. Given that this is a line with relatively few on-line destinations, with most riders making one or even two connections, high frequency is absolutely critical to keeping travel times reasonable. Automation allows even relatively lightly used lines like the IBX to maintain high frequencies off peak. The long-term operational advantages might easily outweigh the additional cost of a very short tunnel.
Taken as a whole, the IBX is potentially valuable project that will significantly improve connectivity within Brooklyn and Queens for people who are not Manhattan-bound. It may also help drive additional ridership on the lightly used outer ends of existing subway lines, improving the value of the network as a whole. It will make lives better in a lot of neighbourhoods that have struggled with accessibility and long commute times. Still, projected 15-minute headways off peak are long for a line that is dependent on connections. Conventional LRT with an on-street segment in the middle will bring significant limitations to what is supposed to be a high-speed regional route.
For an estimated $5.5 billion, it’s hard to shake the fear that the IBX could be even better.
It needs to be Ontario Line'd! I'm sort of serious.
It's overdue, but it being LRT is a disadvantage.