The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has revealed new renderings for the Interborough Express, a new light rail line connecting Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Jackson Heights, Queens. The $5.5 billion light rail line will span 14 miles from the Brooklyn Army Terminal to Roosevelt Avenue, yielding 18 fully accessible stations with connections to 17 subway lines, 51 bus routes, and the Long Island Rail Road. The project is projected to serve 160,000 daily riders, more than any light rail system currently operating in the United States, and shorten travel times for more than 900,000 residents and 260,000 workers near the corridor.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that the MTA plans to release the Draft Environmental Impact Statement ahead of schedule in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Rendering of Interborough Express, via New York State.
Alongside the environmental statement, the MTA detailed accessibility work at the final four non-accessible subway stations that will connect to the line. Upgrades at Broadway Junction, serving the A, C, J, Z, and L trains, are slated for completion by the end of 2027; work at Junius Street on the 3 train, which includes a new connection to Livonia Avenue on the L, is expected to finish by the end of 2026; and improvements at Avenue I on the F train are anticipated by early 2028. Accessibility at a fourth station, Wilson Avenue on the L, has been expedited within the 2025-2029 Capital Plan, with a contract for the work to be awarded by mid-2027.
Rendering of Interborough Express, via New York State.
All 18 new stations will be built to universal design standards, with clear sightlines, tactile floor tiles leading to wide fare gates, pass-through elevators with wider cabs, level boarding throughout the platforms, enhanced lighting, digital signage, and audio announcements. New renderings released with the announcement depict the future New Utrecht Avenue station in Borough Park, and the MTA has launched an updated project website.
The two-year design and engineering phase, launched in August 2025 and led by a joint venture of Jacobs and HDR under a $166 million contract, is the final major step before construction can begin. In essence, the DEIS release is the last significant regulatory hurdle between design and groundbreaking. Funding committed to date includes $2.75 billion from the MTA’s 2025-2029 Capital Plan and $45 million secured in the state’s FY 2026 budget.
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Ill believe it when I see it. Second Ave took 100+ years despite also claiming it would take a decade at most.
SAS took a century because of the Great Depression, World War 2, RObert Moses, the 70s fiscal crisis, Rudy Giuliani’s sheer incompetence, and 9/11. Hopefully we won’t deal with those again.
Who is paying for this?
Billionairs Row..
Taxes of hard-working New Yorkers like myself. And you can bet I’d pay more if the state increased ’em.
So why don’t you (or haven’t you been) paying more taxes? It’s within your control, just deny any deductions that you qualify for and pay more.
There are no elevated stations planned.
Utica Ave and Remsen Ave are both both elevated. Pictured in the rendering looks to be Remsen Ave
Kathy Hochul using more state money 5.5 billion to fund this?
I give it 30 years, if lucky, until completion.
Well, this is not like the Second Ave. Subway, where there had to be excavations. Tracks are already there for a little-used freight line from the Brooklyn docks.
Let’s have congestion pricing in the outer boroughs to pay for it too!
This is a much needed corridor to improve quality of life for so many Brooklyn and Queens residents. They will be able to quickly move through distant but populous neighborhoods for work and pleasure. For the good and bad of it, developers are swooping in for the land grab. Without the proper zoning and bridled pricing these neighborhoods will likely price out the local people who most deserve this benefit. I say kudos to Governor Hochul but please reign in these developers.
Am I to understand that some of the tracks will be at grade level? Just like a trolley car? If so, will traffic lights at intersections automatically adjust so they don’t have to stop for lights?
The existing tracks are in a trench with overpasses for streets and highways.
No. The original plan was to build a surface line for a few blocks around All Faiths Cemetery/Metropolitan Avenue because the tunnel there is only two tracks wide and used by the freight tracks. People objected to surface operation at the scoping meetings, so they are now going to tunnel through. The bottom line is that they have to weigh the cost of tunneling against the reduced benefit of a slower line and the cost of surface running.
There is no money at all to pay for this, and if the US continues its attitudes about Mass Transit, there never will be.
Why are people wasting their time and money over this?
Because we need new developments and more mass transit. remember NYC was once fill with more trolleys than subways covering all the city. Then replaced by stupid cars polluting and destroying the environment
They have already committed a significant amount of funding, what part of that do you not understand?!
Is it done yet? No.
Just like the full 2nd Avenue subway,
or the Gateway Program (Northeast Corridor),
while we build failures like 432 Park Avenue
and others on Billionaires’ Row.
pretty sure they have to design it before they build it, which they are obviously doing. construction starts aug 2027.
This investment will allow for better connectivity through our City. It will also provide TOD opportunities for a completely new stretch of the City. We need to leverage each opportunity to build more housing and this is one of those rare large-scale opportunities.
Demonize speculative developers all you want to, but the rezonings that will happen along this transit corridor will come with MIH obligations for affordable housing and this is a proven method of providing quality mixed-income housing (as opposed to shunting all the lowest income NYer’s into remote places with poor transit and no amenities that can only be viable with large amounts of subsidy from our tax dollars).
A city of 8.5 million should never install a new “light rail” line. The silly name is meant to imply it won’t cost as much. Who are we kidding? This is the corruptly indifferent MTA and it will still cost double or triple new underground metro lines in Paris. This new line, if ever built, should use the same standard trains the rest of the system uses. Bringing in new technology with completely different parts doesn’t save any money. This will be multiple billions over budget and decades delayed for an inadequate train technology.
One million percent this.
“Light rail” is used as a term by the MTA to get around union rules so they can so OPTO or maybe even automate the thing.
It’s not a new light rail line. Maybe you are confusing this with de Blasio’s light rail proposal. This line utilizes existing tracks.
This utilizes the existing righ-of-way dude. They’re not literally re-using the existing tracks.
Probably an unpopular opinion but I’m hoping the MTA completes this early engineering work and just shelves the concept until the agency has better, more visionary leadership.
The IBX’s biggest problem beyond the mode: It’s being pitched as a distributor/connector between subway lines radiating from Manhattan BUT it’s biggest potential lies in not just connecting spokes but increasing capacity by making what is now an arc into a full orbital ring that runs THROUGH Manhattan. Yes, I realize no one has the ambition for that NOW and THAT is the problem. YES I know its cost and its timeline, but that is no reason not to attempt it. That’s called aspirational planning.
The magnificent Hell Gate Bridge links Astoria and the Bronx. One of the four tracks has been removed, Why not restore it and and continue the BQ rail line into the Bronx?
George Haikalis, President of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility!
the city will recoup the money from this project many times over
It’s lifetime.
Look at the California high speed rail project, you midwits, and despair!
Ok, $5.5B price tag? They will be done spending $5.5B and will have built next to nothing. Then they will want $10B more. And then more. $5.5B is a laughable joke.
People fail to understand a basic fact. A Democrat dominated government, like in NY and CA, is literally incapable of completing such a project because of massive, endemic corruption (100x worse now with Mamdammi who will funnel as much as possible to Muslims) and, even worse, abject stupidity. The average Dem politician in a moron. You couldn’t find a single Dem politician in NYC who could explain how a toaster works, but they’re going to get this project done. Right, sure.
Just like the Dems shut off NYs nuclear reactor and replaced it with unicorn dreams, “green energy” plans so abjectly stupid that smart 11 year old could tell you they’d never work, but they went right ahead. And now that all these deadlines are coming up, they’re… moving the deadlines. Because it was ALWAYS a stupid piece of crap plan created by idiots to steal money, and it was NEVER going to work. It was physically impossible, but hey, that doesn’t stop Democrats! Heaps of money wasted, nothing achieved. Power grid more fragile than ever.
You will NEVER see this rail project completed, unless NYC and NY State elect Republicans.
i thought they err, ditched light rail for heavy rail? or some kind of quasi-heavy rail? why are they still calling it a light rail line here?