Officials with the Department of Transportation and the Economic Development Corporation presented new details regarding the mayor’s $2.73 billion trolly project, the Brooklyn Queens Connector, at a meeting of Community Board 2’s Transportation Committee on Jan. 16, including changes to the proposed route and how the city would rejigger streets to accommodate hizzoner’s widely criticized transit scheme.
- The BQX would have its own tracks separate from traffic on 90 percent of its 11-mile route, running in both directions on the same streets.
- Berry Street in Williamsburg and Court Street Downtown, would share at least one of the two tracks with regular traffic.
- The tram will run along the center of Atlantic Avenue, taking over two driving lanes between Columbia and Court streets. To compensate, the city would eliminate metered parking along the Atlantic Avenue section of the route to accommodate traffic.
- DOT would ban cars from Willoughby Street between Adams and Bridge streets by converting it into a “transit-only” thoroughfare for the BQX.
- A stretch of the route along Flushing Avenue from Navy Street through to the Clinton Avenue gate of the Navy Yard, including the entrance to the recently-opened Wegmans grocery emporium, will be converted into a one-way traffic lane westbound.
- The agency plans to install substations about the size of shipping containers along approximately every mile of the route, to convert electricity from the grid into the tram’s overhead wires.
