What Does Queens Need More, a New Park or a New Train Line?
A derelict rail line is being reimagined as a linear park, like Manhattan’s High Line. But in a borough that lacks both green space and transportation, locals wonder whether its best use would be the original one.
NY Times
By Winnie Hu
Nov. 26, 2022
“ As a teenager in the 1990s, Karen Imas sneaked onto some abandoned tracks in Queens with her friends. They followed the broken railroad through a sunlit forest until they could go no further.
“It felt like a hidden gem,” recalled Ms. Imas, now 45 and living near the tracks with her own children. “It was something fun and adventurous that not everyone had access to.”
The three-and-a-half-mile commuter rail line once carried passengers through central and southern Queens as part of a route down to the Rockaways before closing in 1962 amid declining ridership and service. Since then, it has become an industrial ruin, surrounded by overgrown weeds and fallen branches, hidden in the heart of New York City’s second-most populous borough...”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/26/n...high-line.html