He wants them to commute vicariously through others.
Folks in Bay Ridge, Coney Island, and Sheepshead Bay should be happy for their neighbors to the north, Mayor DeBlasio said responding to local pols’ criticism that his streetcar plan focuses transportation improvements on the borough’s hip ‘hoods and leaves Southern Brooklynites waiting on the platform.
“People should support each others’ neighborhoods,” DeBlasio said while touting the project in Red Hook this morning.. “And if we have a whole group of neighborhoods here that have not had enough service that are now going to get more service, I think we should celebrate that.”
Southern Brooklyn pols have charged that Hizzoner’s $2.5 billion trolley plan connecting waterfront industrial and tech hotbeds in Sunset Park, Dumbo, and the Navy Yard to distant Queens ignores millions’ of Southern Brooklynites’ transit needs, including the rebirth of Brooklyn’s express F train service.
“We’re not asking for a fancy street car, we’re not asking for pie-in-the-sky ideas and luxury items, we’re asking for service that was taken from the people of Southern Brooklyn, and we’re fighting for that to be restored,” said Councilman Mark Treyger (D–Coney Island). “Lets focus on the nuts and bolts of basic governance.”
Straphangers will have to take up their collective beef with the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the mayor said.
“We for a long time have encouraged the MTA to invest in the outer boroughs — particularly the under-served areas of the outer boroughs — and there’s still allot of work to be done on that front,” he said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is funded through the city and state. But the mayor plans to fund his streetcar through increased property tax revenue resulting from economic development he says the trolley would spurn — a move that requires no oversight from Gov. Cuomo or transportation authority honchos, he said.
Building the tram in areas that the administration believes are poised for growth gives the system a foothold for expansion, the mayor said.
“This is to me is a good and noble experiment — it could open the door to light rail in other parts of the city,” DeBlasio said. “This happens to be a place of particularly concentrated population and economic growth — and a particular ability to get that new revenue that would pay for that light rail. There’s a set of conditions here that may be different than many other places, but if it works here, it’s going to be easier to do light rail in other places that could use it as well.”
