WITH proponents of the so-called QueensLink, a proposed rail line revival that would link subways or LIRR lines in Rego Park to a subway in Woodhaven, rallying once more at City Hall on September 7, 2023, my thoughts turned one again to an exploration of the right of way I did in early 2000. The revival has some popular support as well as “tactical air support” from politicians of widely diverging opinions on everything else. Some wish to turn the space into a rail line, some into a linear park, similar in layout but not esthetics to the High Line in Chelsea, Manhattan. Others believe both can be done at once. Anything can happen, but even if environmental studies and property acquisitions and construction happen, any rail would appear in 15-20 years. I may or may not be around.
A park proposal is not unprecedented. I was last in Chicago in 2001 but I would like to return to take a walk on that city’s The 606 linear park, a former rail line along Bloomingdale Avenue in the city’s northwest sector. Paris has a similar project. My preference would be the hybrid plan to bring both rail and a park atop the tracks.
The Long Island Railroad’s Rockaway Beach Branch diverged from the LIRR’s Main Line in Rego Park at about 66th Ave. at what was called Whitepot Junction. It ran south through the neighborhoods of Middle Village, Woodhaven, Ozone Park, Howard Beach, across Jamaica Bay and through Broad Channel, and on to the Rockaway Peninsula, where one spur continued east and rejoined the LIRR in Far Rockaway, and the other went west and dead-ended at Beach 116th St. at the Rockaway Park station. The LIRR discontinued service across Jamaica Bay in 1950 after a fire, and then ended service between Rego Park and Ozone Park in 1962. The Transit Authority stepped in and restored the Jamaica Bay connection in 1956, connecting the peninsula to the Liberty Avenue el, but the rest of the line has been allowed to deteriorate in place.
For the past couple of decades, two proposals have arisen to deal with that remaining right-of-way. The Queensway proposal would convert it to a linear park in the same way that the old West Side Freight Railway became High Line Park; similar conversions have been done in Philadelphia and Chicago. A second proposal (that I lean toward) would rebuild the rails and connect them to the IND Queens Boulevard Line, with a new subway line connecting the IND Rockaway connection at Liberty Avenue to Queens Boulevard or a new LIRR line connecting Atlantic Avenue with the main branch. Both would require a massive outlay in funds and support from local communities. Call me a cynic, but neither will happen and I predict nothing will happen along the old railroad branch anytime soon. (I’d like to connect it to the Queens Boulevard line.)
in March 2000 I set out with a band of urban explorers that walked the old LIRR Rockaway Branch from Rego Park to Woodhaven. The group included the late photographer and urban chronicler Bernard Ente (left); the MTA’s Mark Wolodarsky (reflector jacket) and my friend Vincent Losinno (right). In 2019 I published the photos in newly rescanned versions. Mark had previously led us into the abandoned Ninth Avenue El tunnel that connected the el in Manhattan under a hilly area in the western Bronx with the Jerome Avenue El.
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9/7/23