Boro Park To Flatbush in 5 Minutes? MTA Plans New Brooklyn Subway Line

A new Brooklyn light rail train line connecting the communities of Flatbush, Boro Park and Crown Heights within minutes and provide a much-needed connection between Brooklyn and Queens.

Enter the “Interborough Express,” which would use an existing 14-mile right-of-way now used as a freight line between Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and Jackson Heights in central Queens. It would run alongside the freight line except for a short distance in Middle Village in Queens, where it would run on street level.

The new line would run along 61st Street in Boro Park and Ave H in Flatbush and Midwood. The line would also easily connect with Crown Heights with the 2, 5 and 3 Lines and the Frum communities in central Queens (Kew Gardens Hills, Forest Hills and Kew Gardens).

“Each day I would go to Queens by public transportation, had there been a single ride, it would save up to an hour every day,” a Boro Park resident told FrumNews.com “Even going to Flatbush and Crown Heights is a schlep, this would slash my commute in half.”

Standing at Ave J and Ocean Parkway, it would take an estimated 7 minutes to get to the Shomrei Shabbos Shul by 13th Avenue in Boro Park, and 25 Minutes to reach Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights (with a connection to the 3 line).

The Regional Plan Association originally proposed the line as the “Triboro RX” along this route in 1996 and again pushed it in 2012. The plan gained steam in the past decade, especially during the Covid pandemic as work shifted toward the outer boroughs. (We should note that the original plan would have gone toward the Bronx.) The nearly 150-year-old right-of-way is owned by the Long Island Railroad and partially owned by CSX.

In 2020, the MTA awarded a $1.3 million contract to study the feasibility of restoring passenger service to this section. In 2022, during the NY State of the State, Governor Kathy Hochul said the MTA will move forward with the plan by conducting an environmental study on the IBX. (The governor also directed the Port Authority to complete an environmental review for a cross-freight rail tunnel, which could potentially link with the Bay Ridge Connector freight line.)

In 2023, the MTA announced that the line would be a Light Rail line rather than heavy rail. In 2024, the MTA started engineering for the proposed line.

The MTA expects the plan would cost $5.5 billion and would carry 40 million passengers annually. There is no official timeline for when the line will be complete.

FrumNews.com Context: The Subway system and railroads (MTA, LIRR, Metro North, PATH and NJ Transit) in New York City were primarily built to transport millions of passengers in and out of Manhattan. The system was designed in the early 1900s, just as the five boroughs were unified and the outer boroughs were built with the subway expansion.

Currently, the subway system has limited direct connections between the outer boroughs. The G line connects western Queens and Brooklyn, including the neighborhoods of Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope, and Boro Park. (It is also the only non-shuttle line that does not enter Manhattan.) The A, J, and Z lines also connect the two boroughs, east to west.

The one large frum community and neighborhood that would not be connected to this project due to it’s location would be Williamsburg. However, as mentioned above, the G Subway line already connects Williamsburg to Boro Park and Flatbush.

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