[NYguy]

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/call...e-serve-brooklyn-nabes-article-1.2790844

Former Port Authority head calls for underground subway linking isolated Brooklyn nabes to Manhattan

BY DAN RIVOLI
September 13, 2016

When it comes to moving people and growing the economy in Red Hook and Sunset Park, Brooklyn, streetcars and ferries aren’t enough, former Port Authority chief Chris Ward said on Tuesday.

In a presentation focusing on those isolated neighborhoods, where vacant land has been redeveloped with shiny new housing and waterfront parks, Ward proposed a new underwater subway tunnel connecting them across the harbor to lower Manhattan.

To give the neighborhoods a transit lifeline, Mayor de Blasio proposed the Brooklyn-Queens Connector, a 16-mile trolley that’ll run from Sunset Park to Astoria, Queens. The mayor’s five-borough ferry plan also covers Red Hook.

But Ward, an executive at a construction and engineering firm called AECOM, went further, calling for an extra three new stops in Brooklyn to bring Manhattan’s No. 1 line into Red Hook. He’d rename it the No. 9 train.

The $3.5-billion line would connect to the F, G and R lines at the 4th Ave-9th St. station in Gowanus, with links to the streetcar. Tax revenue from development would partially cover the cost.

“That’s moving the people that you really need to get in and around the city,” Ward said after his talk at NYU Rudin Center for Transportation.

As for the Brooklyn-Queens Connector, known as the BQX, Ward said it’d be “very difficult for that to be a job commuting strategy.”

And ferries just can’t handle the same loads as subways.

“The number of people you move and how much that can undergird an economy, it’s not enough,” Ward said.

He did, however, give de Blasio “kudos” for the BQX project.

But Ward says his proposed transit changes would spur development — as much as 45 million square feet for 45,000 units.

An MTA spokeswoman, meanwhile, said it’s in the “very preliminary stages of an idea,” but the agency looks forward to seeing more details. A rep for de Blasio did not return a request for comment.

Jill Eisenhard, director of the Red Hook Initiative, who also spoke at the NYU event, said there has been “conversation after conversation” about how far public transit is from the neighborhood.

She recalled the response from Red Hook residents who heard a pitch on the BQX.

“They were saying, yes, someone finally heard that we need transportation in Red Hook,” she said.