NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Tuesday began the engineering process for the proposed Interborough Express light rail line in Brooklyn and Queens.
The MTA’s Request for Proposals for consultant bids for the preliminary engineering phase of the project begins a process expected to take approximately two years. The 14-mile Interborough Express, or IBX, to be built along a currently freight-only Long Island Rail Road line, will connect 17 subway lines, 51 current bus routes, and LIRR commuter rail service [see “MTA to build first light rail line …,” Trains News Wire, Jan. 12, 2023].
“This RFP is a major step toward making the IBX a reality,” Jamie Torres-Springer, president of MTA Construction & Development, said in a press release. “We look forward to continuing the progress we’ve made to date by advancing the IBX project design to build better, faster, and cheaper.”
The RFP is available here.
Preliminary engineering involves reaching the 30% stage in design and engineering work, needed to award future construction contracts. Early environmental review has begun in anticipation of Federal Transit Administration approval to formally begin the National Environmental Policy Act environmental review process.
The MTA says continuing refinement of Interborough Express planning now calls for a tunnel, rather than on-street operations, beneath Metropolitan Avenue in Queens’ Middle Village neighborhood, as well as a station north of Atlantic Avenue in the East New York section of Brooklyn that will facilitate transfers to the A, C, J, Z, and L trains at the Broadway Junction station complex, as well as the LIRR East New York Station.
Funding for the preliminary engineering is included in the New York State 2025 budget; the U.S. Department of Transportation also awarded $15 million under the Rebuilding Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant program.
The whole line would not be in a tunnel just short segments in congested areas.
My understanding in having this line be a ‘light rail’ line versus a subway line was that digging a tunnel would have been too complicated and costly. As the MTA has now seen that on street running would be a tremendous bottleneck, and they now want a tunnel, why is this still being built as ‘light rail’? They’re needlessly limiting capacity, and still have to add a whole new vehicle to the MTA fleet, rather than retrofit around existing equipment.