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Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub |
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Posted by italianstallion on Sat Nov 8 23:46:52 2014 I love visionary ail ideas as much as anyone, and I especially love repurposing abandoned ROWs for transit. But this idea seems wildly impractical. It involves building a new transit hub/convention center in the S. Bronx, connecting Amtrak and the 8th and 2nd Ave. lines to it, building an Airtrain from it underwater to Laguardia, extending Laguardia to take over Rikers Island, and turning Sunnyside Yards and Javits Center into parks. PS, what is the abandoned line through the S. Bronx that's referred to?Times  Folly or Genius? Jim Venturi’s plan for expanding La Guardia Airport would radically transfigure the landscape on both sides of the East River. 1. La Guardia would expand to include Rikers Island, allowing construction of 160 gates and of four runways long enough for big jets. 2. A new terminal at Port Morris would accommodate rerouted subways and Amtrak trains from Penn Station, and cars from the Bruckner and Deegan Expressways. 3. Passengers would be transferred between terminal and gates on a shuttle train running under the East River. 4. Sunnyside railroad yard would become a park, transportation hub and development site. Trains staging here would be moved to a new yard in Port Morris. Some excerpts: Jim Venturi has a big idea, and it led him, on a recent afternoon, to a lush strip of overgrown vegetation in the South Bronx, through a gap in the wire fence, past a sign saying to keep out, past abandoned furniture and an empty homeless encampment. The green swath was an abandoned railway line that once ran across the South Bronx, from Port Morris on the East River to Spuyten Duyvil on the Hudson, connecting the Bronx to a vast transportation network — an invaluable piece of infrastructure, Mr. Venturi said, just waiting for someone to use it. Last month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced a $500,000 competition to modernize four New York airports. Mr. Venturi’s big idea, which is still in its drawing phase, involves the radical transformation of La Guardia Airport, and it runs through this patch of unkempt green. * * * On a bright recent morning, Mr. Venturi stood on the terrace of his 19th-floor Riverside Drive apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and pointed to bits of city infrastructure: the Amtrak line to Albany; the Hell Gate railroad bridge to Queens; the site of the never-built Westway, a proposed underground highway for which Mr. Venturi’s parents and a colleague, Frederic Schwartz, had contributed designs. Jim Venturi’s first trip to New York was to visit Mr. Schwartz during the design phase of Westway. To solve La Guardia’s problems, Mr. Venturi decided, it wasn’t enough to annex Rikers. On the advice of a friend, the architect Henry Smith-Miller, he began to look at the Bronx. The industrial Port Morris neighborhood, with its sewage treatment plant and assorted warehouses, was just across the river from the jails and had access to Amtrak, Metro-North and subway lines, including the abandoned rail tracks west to Spuyten Duyvil. It was ripe for the taking, Mr. Venturi thought. * * * So he let his imagination go: Why not build a massive, 22-track rail station and airport terminal in Port Morris, and put the gates on Rikers — connected by a shuttle train, as at the airports in Atlanta and Denver? The present La Guardia space could then accommodate four runways instead of the current two, with extensions into the East River to lengthen them. * * * Poring over old and new subway and train maps, he began to look at Penn Station and the rail yards in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Queens — both places that had a lot of subways and rail lines. Why not make another transit hub in Sunnyside, joining the subways that already stop there — the E, M, N, R, Q and 7 trains — with new connections to Metro-North, Amtrak, the Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit? The rail lines could continue to Penn Station in one direction, and up to the new La Guardia superstation in the other. (He’d extend the new Second Avenue subway up there as well.) “It would connect the boroughs with each other and with the suburbs,” Mr. Venturi said. At the same time, he proposed moving the unsightly Sunnyside train yards up to Port Morris, near the airport, and building a massive convention center over them to replace the Javits center. On the old Sunnyside site, he would build a 300-acre park. The park and transit station, he said, would draw developers — office towers, apartment buildings, restaurants — creating a real downtown Queens to compete with Manhattan or Brooklyn. On the site of the current Javits center, in Manhattan, he would build another park, possibly with an aquarium. |
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Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub |
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Posted by Jackson Park B Train on Sun Nov 9 00:20:07 2014, in response to Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub, posted by italianstallion on Sat Nov 8 23:46:52 2014. Ideally yards are as close to a terminal as can be arranged--Burlington immediately south of Union Station in Chicago or Ivy City for DC Union Station as examples. |
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Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Sun Nov 9 01:23:04 2014, in response to Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub, posted by italianstallion on Sat Nov 8 23:46:52 2014. The abandoned rail line appears to be the Port Morris freight branch which, from the Oak Point CSX yard, had a single track connection which curved west near 142nd Street under the Amtrak/freight ROW, then curved north under St. Mary's Park, ran nearly parallel to Brook Ave, and then connected with the MNR Harlem Line north of Melrose station.From what I've read, this branch is one possible alignment for the Triboro RX, providing service to Yankee Stadium (some new ROW construction would be required, especially now that a new building near Brook Ave and 156 St was built over the ROW; the latest RX proposal calls for a Hunts Point terminal (transfer point to future MNR East Bronx branch), but I'm not sure if the Port Morris branch alignment has been ruled out... Visit my blog! |
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Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub |
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Posted by The Silence on Sun Nov 9 01:31:26 2014, in response to Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub, posted by italianstallion on Sat Nov 8 23:46:52 2014. Folly or Genius?I'd say more idiotic with a touch of hair brained... Does LAG need to be modernized? yes. But should that incur demolishing half of East Elmhurst and Astoria? And it's design in all wrong. Why in God's name are we building an airport in Queens that you can only seem to get to from the Bronx? |
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Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub |
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Posted by AlM on Sun Nov 9 04:45:22 2014, in response to Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub, posted by italianstallion on Sat Nov 8 23:46:52 2014. That reminds me of a brilliant idea. Why not build a commuter railroad from a transit terminal at 132nd Street and Willis Avenue up along existing rights of way to White Plains and Port Chester? |
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Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub |
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Posted by Numbersix on Sun Nov 9 07:43:03 2014, in response to Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub, posted by AlM on Sun Nov 9 04:45:22 2014. Let's send it all the way to Boston. |
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Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub |
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Posted by merrick1 on Sun Nov 9 07:56:26 2014, in response to Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub, posted by The Silence on Sun Nov 9 01:31:26 2014. If the airport were extend to Rikers Island it would be partly in The Bronx |
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Re: Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub |
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Posted by NIMBYkiller on Sun Nov 9 15:27:49 2014, in response to Wild Idea to Link Laguardia to New South Bronx Rail Hub, posted by italianstallion on Sat Nov 8 23:46:52 2014. Interesting to say the least...might have some merit. I wouldn't relocate Sunnyside yards though. They could just deck over it though |
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