Calls this week for the city to improve mass transportation to and from the Rockaway peninsula by reactivating a long-retired Long Island Rail Road branch met resistance from some mainlanders concerned about the quality of life in their communities.Before 1962, trains ran on the Rockaway Beach Branch out of Manhattan through Rego Park and Forest Park and south through Richmond Hill, South Ozone Park, Howard Beach, Hamilton Beach, Broad Channel and the Rockaways. Roughly four miles of track still run through Forest Park to Aqueduct Race Track, only blocks east of Woodhaven Boulevard. This, coupled with the peninsula’s steady population growth since the branch’s closing, have prompted many to advocate for its revitalization for years.
But with Rockaway now experiencing a population explosion — a 10 percent jump is expected in the next decade, according to Community Board 14 District Manager Delores Orr — the revitalization plan has new momentum.
Dozens of Rockaway residents attended a City Council Transportation Committee hearing on Tuesday night in Broad Channel to implore Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials to at least consider the project.
Lew Simon, the co-chairman of the Rockaway Subcommittee of the Regional Rail Working Group, which has advocated for the reopening of the line for 11 years, said: “We in our district have the worst abomination of transportation.”
Simon argued that the ride from Rockaway to Penn Station on the revitalized line would take 32 minutes, a trip that many say now takes between an hour and 45 minutes and two hours and 15 minutes when riding on buses and the A train.
John Fazio, a Howard Beach resident, said that the line’s reopening would be good news for mainlanders as well. An LIRR trip between Ozone Park and Penn Station would take 18 minutes and one between Howard Beach and Penn Station would take 20 minutes, he said.
In light of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recently announced congestion pricing plan, Fazio added: “That’s a lot of cabs and buses off the roads.”
But others off the peninsula say that construction on the line and the trains that would run on it would bring detrimental quality-of-life issues to nearby residents. The Rockaway Beach Branch Greenway Committee is trying to gather momentum for the construction of a bicycle and pedestrian path along the existing tracks, but in March, Community Board 6 would not endorse efforts to study its feasibility.
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