New York City is crisscrossed with train tracks. Some of them, like the Rockaway Beach Branch, have sat abandoned for 50 years; others are majorly underused, only traveled by freight trains a few times a day. In the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, in particular, an old track was recently thrust into the spotlight when New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced plans to revive an underused, 14-mile, right-of-way and build what she called the Interborough Express.
Comprised of Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) tracks in Brooklyn and CSX tracks in Queens, the Interborough Express would link Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to Jackson Heights in Queens, while connecting to over 17 subway lines and Long Island Rail Road stations. It would serve about 1 million riders daily, allowing riders to travel between Queens and Brooklyn without ever going into downtown Manhattan. “The concept of connecting lines circumferentially is filling a major gap in the NYC subway,” says Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. Freemark cites similar projects like Moscow’s Circle Line and Paris’ Grand Paris Express, which, when complete, will allow travel from one region to another without having to transfer in the city. “Not everyone needs to get to get to the center of the city,” he says.
Here are four underused corridors that could be revived, selected with the help of five transit experts.
The Atlanta BeltLine
With no mountains or shorelines to stop Atlanta from sprawling in the postwar boom, the city just kept growing. Today, the entire metropolitan area of Atlanta counts about 5.8 million residents, many of whom live outside Interstate 285, which encircles the city. With virtually no public transit, living in this vast sprawl means driving for hours.
The Atlanta BeltLine provides a good template for how underused rail tracks can be transformed into both a walking trail and a light rail line. Which solution is better suited to any given city remains highly contextual, but for Michael Kodransky, the U.S. Director at the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, both can coexist. “Abandoned rail lines offer an opportunity for renewed passenger travel, as opposed to being used as rail trails, but we don’t have to pick,” he says, noting that displacement remains an issue regardless. “It goes through historically Black neighborhoods where there is a real threat of serious displacement,” he says.
The North Coast Hiawatha
When the North Coast Hiawatha line was inaugurated in the early 1970s, it connected Seattle and Chicago via six states. It ran for 10 years before budget cuts shuttered the line in 1980. In recent years, however, there has been a push to restore the corridor, which The Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority estimates would generate more than $270 million in economic benefits.
The North Shore
After 68 years of service, the beloved North Shore rail line gave into the growing construction of highways and stopped operating in 1963. The interurban route, which stretched across 106 miles, linking the Chicago loop and downtown Milwaukee via Racine, Wisconsin, was partially brought back in 1963. But the 33-mile commuter line stretch, north of Milwaukee, never resumed.
The Downeaster extension
Rail advocacy groups have been fighting to restore efficient rail service in Maine for years. According to Andrew Sandweiss, a director at the Maine Rail Group, the unused corridor between Portland and Bangor is particularly crucial in a car-dominated state like Maine, where cars account for 35%-40% of the state’s carbon footprint. “Beyond the occasional intercity bus service, most towns have no other means of reliable alternative transportation,” Sandweiss says. “A rail revival in Maine would catalyze new economic development, attract youth to move to or stay in Maine, provide greater mobility, and contribute to Maine’s environmental goals of reducing carbon emissions.”
