By Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso
Imagine this: you’re in Bay Ridge, waiting for a train to go to your new job in Jackson Heights. You hop on, riding east into Midwood, through Flatbush and Canarsie, up to Broadway Junction, and finally into Queens in about 40 minutes. Right now, this is an impossible idea.
No trains connect southern Brooklyn to Queens without going through Manhattan, and only a few lines connect Brooklyn from west to east. But this isn’t just an urban fantasy: this is a big idea that could be realized if Albany funds the 2025-2029 MTA Capital Plan.
Yet, this Christmas Eve, leadership in Albany said “Bah! Humbug!” by rejecting the 2025-2029 MTA Capital Plan that included funding for the Interborough Express (IBX), a transformative project connecting southern Brooklyn to east Brooklyn and Queens via an existing 14-mile freight rail line.
For the 900,000 residents and 260,000 workers who live and work within a half mile of the line, the IBX would mean those who are underserved by our transit system could travel between our two boroughs without going through Manhattan. The IBX accomplishes this by providing an important link to the rest of our transit system, connecting southern and eastern Brooklyn with 17 subway lines and the Long Island Rail Road.
Brooklynites who are forced to navigate multiple transfers between bus and subway, or worse, pony up for expensive car payments, insurance, and parking, will be given new, direct access to the region’s rail network.
The IBX would not just connect people to people and people to possibility — it would also help us move goods in, around, and out of our borough. Right now, almost all freight and deliveries headed to Long Island pass through Brooklyn and Queens on trucks, including those that arrive by ship in our very own harbor.
The IBX’s plan to preserve the existing Bay Ridge Branch freight line would allow it to link up with the Port Authority’s Cross Harbor Freight Program — an ambitious project which prioritizes rail- and port-based alternatives to trucking as a method to move freight around our city. This means that fewer packages have to sit in city traffic when their destination is outside the borough. And fewer trucks in Brooklyn’s streets means less traffic congestion, less emissions, and better air quality.
During the Capital Plan process, the MTA has been clear: we need to prioritize maintaining and modernizing our transit system. More than 90% of the proposed Capital Plan is dedicated to “state of good repair” work, which includes not only highly visible things like new trains but also behind-the-scenes investments like upgraded rail yards that allow for faster maintenance and cleaning.
Some of this work is playing catch up after decades of neglect from Albany, but a lot of it will also leave the subway in even better condition than before: for example, modernized signals won’t just reduce delays but allow more trains to run too, getting us closer to the goal of 6-minute service sought by advocates.
In this way, “state of good repair” is not only about fixing past wrongs but leaving the subway network in a better place than how we inherited it. The MTA’s 20-Year Needs Assessment evaluated a slew of potential expansion projects, but when push came to shove, it included the IBX as one of its only marquee expansion projects because it is an essential investment in extending transit to where New Yorkers live and work in 2025.
Moreover, the IBX is a fiscally sound investment to prioritize — it takes advantage of an existing right-of-way and would coordinate with already-planned work and funding opportunities for freight improvements. Building the IBX would bring our transit system toward not only a state of good repair but a state of good design.
Funding a project this good, in a moment when public trust is this bad, should be a no-brainer. Yet here we are, with our leaders in Albany wringing their hands over funding the IBX while Route 17 in the Catskills is slated for a $1.3 billion widening project to save way fewer people only six minutes of travel time.
New Yorkers are begging for big solutions to the everyday challenges they face, and the IBX, with a projected annual ridership exceeding 35 million, is exactly that. It’s time for our state leadership to take note and fully fund the MTA Capital Plan — and they can even take a cue from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and flex highway funding to do it.
