Forgotten New York

ASTORIA ELS

I am always seeking out mass transit “missed opportunities.” I think one of these is at the north end of the elevated Astoria Line, which runs above 31st Street in Astoria and stops just short of Ditmars Boulevard. According to transit lore, that “short stop” is there because the line was eventually going to be extended east to where LaGuardia Airport would eventually be built, along Ditmars Boulevard. Today, the boulevard is a bustling business section and restaurant row.

Both the Astoria Line and the Hell Gate Bridge carrying Amtrak trains to areas north and east were built at about the same time in 1917. Passenger trains crossing the Hell Gate today all run express from Penn Station east through Sunnyside Yards and then north and west across the Hell Gate, but I would have thought that Astoria residents would have a golden opportunity to board northbound Amtrak trains today had a transfer station, a la the one at Woodside, could have been built so that passengers could debark from the Astoria Line and ride an escalator to an Amtrak station. I don’t know if space exists today for such a connection today…but as a transit buff, I can fantasize.

As it turns out, there are plans to build a new Metro-North station in Astoria as part of East Side and West Side Access, but I’m now 65 and whether this station opens while I’m alive is worthy of conjecture.

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7/8/23

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