BQX Prototype Unveiled At Brooklyn Navy Yard

BROOKLYN NAVY YARDS — Brooklyn and Queens borough presidents have a message for New Yorkers about plans to build a waterway tram: Get on board.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Queens Borough President Melinda Katz joined the Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector — an activist group lobbying the deBlasio administration to prioritize developing the tram — and local community groups to unveil the prototype of the BQX Citadis at the Brooklyn Navy Yards Monday morning.

“Everyone is on board, for the most part, with the concept that we need to improve the transportation that we’re having from the waterfront to inland,” said Adams. “This is on the right track.”

The two-car prototype — which was developed in Nice, France — is 46 feet long, 8.7 feet wide, and holds 23 red cushioned seats plus a conductor’s booth.

Its 14-mile waterfront track would run through Astoria, Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, the Navy Yard, DUMBO, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens Red Hook and Sunset Park.

The tram would be level with the street and have ramp access to make it more wheelchair-accessible than the subway.

(The BQX prototype was parked outside the New Lab in the Brooklyn Navy Yards on Monday.)

BQX supporters gathered with Adams and Katz to throw their support behind a new inter-borough mode of transportation.

“This would be very convenient for me,” said Shirley Brown, 57, of Long Island City. “Transportation is the challenge.”

As a foster mother, Brown is often required to travel across the five boroughs and must take a 10-minute bus ride to get to her closest subway station. She estimated it took her about two hours to get to the Brooklyn Navy Yards on Monday.

Maya Ortiz, 14, a student in Williamsburg, said she feels scared going down into the subways by herself. The BQX would allow her to explore the city and connect her with people she doesn’t often see.

“I have lazy friends who live in Bushwick,” she said.

(Queens Borough President Melinda Katz takes a selfie with Queens resident April Simpson on the BQX prototype.)

Activists have said the BQX could service to about 400,000 New Yorkers and be up-and-running by as soon as 2024 if construction begins in 2019.

But the New York Post recently reported that because BQX tracks would run over state-owned lands, the project is not likely to get the go-ahead from Governor Cuomo.

Claudia Coger, Resident Association of the NYCHA Astoria Houses, where the closest subway is about a mile away, appealed directly to Mayor de Blasio to beg better transportation options for her community.

“Our residents have to struggle here for opportunities provided to so many others,” said Coger. “Mr. Mayor, the time is now for the BQX.”

Photos by Kathleen Culliton