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\n Governor Kathy Hochul and MTA chairman Janno Lieber road a Coney Island-bound D train Friday morning to a presser announcing the future of the Interborough Express.
\n Photo: Susan Watts\/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s just before 10 on a Friday morning,<\/strong> the D train is hurtling toward Coney Island, and Governor Kathy Hochul is working the car, Tom Cruise style. She fist-bumps a first-year medical student who got on at Atlantic-Barclays, shakes hands with a salt-and-pepper-haired man who was staring at the governor and her aides, and tells another, similarly bewildered rider, \u201cWe\u2019re going to have a great ride!\u201d Janno Lieber, the MTA chairman and CEO who stands about a foot taller than the governor, is making rounds of his own just a few steps behind her, talking to people about where they\u2019re headed. \u201cYou guys coming from Brooklyn?\u201d he asks a couple. Hochul and Lieber, for their part, are headed to the border of Borough Park and Bensonhurst to announce that the Interborough Express<\/a> is moving from the \u201cplanning\u201d phase to the \u201cactive\u201d phase of development. What that means is that the project now has an engineering team in place to design the light rail that\u2019s supposed to take someone from Bay Ridge to Jackson Heights in about 30 minutes. As for when that someone might actually step foot on such a train? \u201cWe\u2019d be spitballing now,\u201d Hochul says. Perhaps before the Mets win their next<\/a> World Series? \u201cYou gotta believe,\u201d Lieber says.<\/p>\n When we arrive at the 62nd Street-New Utrecht Avenue stop, Hochul, Lieber, and their teams head toward the rocky freight corridor where a single-rail track line is surrounded by leafy trees. If everything goes according to plan, this will be the site of one of the IBX\u2019s 19 stations. (A green New York & Atlantic Railway freight car parked on the track line said as much with giant signs affixed to its front and side reading \u201cFuture Home of the IBX.\u201d) The idea for the interborough rail has been kicking around in one form or another for the better part of 30 years. Per Lieber, the governor got onboard the project shortly after she was elected. \u201cShe fastened on this project because of the time savings,\u201d he says. For her part, Hochul adds, \u201cI like to take the stalled projects, the ones that have been talked about, and bring them to life.\u201d And, really, what\u2019s not to like about the IBX? Despite being the two most populous boroughs in the city, it is still incredibly time-consuming, for the most part, to get from Brooklyn to Queens and vice versa. If you live in Gravesend and want to see your aunt in Middle Village or get tacos in Jackson Heights, you\u2019re looking at an hour-plus commute and a detour through Manhattan. Lieber says his daughter, who lives in Williamsburg, has to go into Manhattan to take the train to see him and his wife in Flatbush. (I might suggest the G and walk to Atlantic transfer as an alternative, for what it\u2019s worth.) \u201cYou\u2019ve got thousands and thousands of people living in East Flatbush, and they don\u2019t really have access to rail when you get past what we call \u2018the junction,\u2019 where the 2\/5 ends,\u201d Lieber says.<\/p>\n \n Hochul made the rounds on the train car, Tom Cruise-style, giving riders fist-bumps and shaking hands. To create a more direct path, and bring transit to parts of the boroughs that desperately need it, the planned IBX will run 14 miles along an existing freight corridor owned by the Long Island Railroad and the rail company CSX to connect these parts of the city.\u00a0For an OMNY swipe, the IBX is projected to move an estimated 165,000 daily riders in a tidy 32 minutes, with transfers to 17 subway lines, the LIRR, and 51 buses.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a housing component to the project, though not directly. A report released last month by the New York Building Congress estimated<\/a> that the light rail could ultimately spur development of more than 70,000 new homes along the route over the course of a decade with the help of some land-use changes. The rail\u2019s designated path winds through some of the city\u2019s least dense areas \u2014\u00a0the swaths of one- and two-families in Maspeth and the manufacturing zones of Canarsie and East New York. According to Crain\u2019s, developers are already eyeing sites<\/a> near the rail\u2019s proposed stations. (Rezonings are likely to face challenges in at least some of these neighborhoods, particularly the ones with City Council members who voted against the City of Yes.)\u00a0\u201cI absolutely need that done,\u201d Hochul says of the new housing. The reasons are obvious enough<\/a> at this point, but she\u2019s also watching the shortage of affordable housing across the city condemn some of its youngest residents to an unspeakable fate: \u201cThey\u2019re going to New Jersey,\u201d she says. \u201cWhy? Because they built more housing. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n While we\u2019ve been led along about cross-borough transit before \u2014\u00a0like Bill de Blasio\u2019s ill-fated Brooklyn-Queens Connector<\/a> that would have shuttled riders from Red Hook to Astoria via streetcar \u2014 the IBX and its projected 2030s-ish timeline<\/a> feels far more serious: For one, Hochul approved funding in April through the state budget that covered half of the IBX\u2019s expected $5.5 billion price tag (the train cars are going to cost<\/a> another $432 million). There\u2019s also a line of city and state officials supporting the new rail. \u201cJackson Heights has some of the best food,\u201d says Queens Borough President Donovard Richards Jr. during the press conference, \u201cso we look forward to our Brooklyn people coming to spend their money.\u201d<\/p>\n That said, it\u2019s hard not to wonder what\u2019s going to happen here given the backpedaling we\u2019ve seen<\/a> on other projects and still-unfulfilled promises<\/a> with others, the recent sparring between New York and Washington over everything from congestion pricing to what a Real World alum from Wisconsin thinks about our subways<\/a>, and the Trump administration trying<\/a> to blow a hole in the MTA\u2019s budget by withholding promised federal funds. <\/a>Plus, there are utilities to be moved and bridges to be shored up along the path. It\u2019s a simple idea but not exactly a simple project.<\/p>\n Kathryn Garcia, the governor\u2019s director of state operations, is well aware. She says after the press conference that the state has been in federal court fighting the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to withhold funds over congestion pricing. As for the IBX costs, there\u2019s enough state funding earmarked to get shovels in the ground, but the state would welcome the federal government pitching in at some point: \u201cWe know that the money will be needed in the future, and we haven\u2019t closed that door, because hopefully there will be a better federal administration in the future,\u201d Garcia says.<\/p>\n As the press appearance winds down, Lieber, who called Hochul \u201cthe most impactful governor on transit since Nelson Rockefeller,\u201d made an early exit. Hochul hung back for a few more questions from reporters and pictures with other officials. Eventually, she started packing it in too. The governor made it up the hill from the rail corridor, where a black Suburban was waiting to take her to eastern Queens. The train from here is a slog, after all.<\/p>\n \n Will we get to ride the IBX before the Mets win their next World Series? \u201cYou gotta believe,\u201d Lieber says. Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/efd3dcd3773719b860cf2b200e799dd65c-54693072031-bed5df6bc7-k.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Susan Watts\/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/973d2a92143c916f84798a4af1ed86713d-IMG-9464.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Matthew Sedacca\n <\/p>\n