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Nothing at all to do with Amtrak, except that Sunnyside Yard is located there, but as a former resident of the borough and graduate of Queens College, I just have to post this:
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For years now there has been talk about putting in a Queens stop along the Hell Gate Line. I think it should be at Northern Blvd and Woodside Avenue behind the Home Depot. Plenty of room there for a ten car high level platform and a La Guardia / Kennedy airports express bus stop. The M and R Subway Lines are nearby too. A station over the Grand Central Parkway at Astoria Boulevard would be ideal, but far more costly than the first location I suggested. Acela Express, New England Regional, and Metro-North trains for Penn Station all could make good use of it.
There probably should be a new station in The Bronx, too. I think East Tremont Avenue at 180th Street would be good. Or Pelham Parkway at Stillwell Avenue. Plenty of room around there for development!
-------------------- Everybody has to believe in something. I believe I'll take the train! Posts: 230 | From: Ithaca, New York | Registered: May 2009
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Nice ideas, Dave, although bordering on the far-fetched. Then again, growing up near the "old" (1939) World's Fair Grounds in the 50's, it would certainly have seemed far-fetched to envision another (1964) World's Fair and not one, but two, baseball stadiums (stadia?) springing up nearby.
Posts: 1530 | From: Ocala, FL | Registered: Dec 2006
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Maybe 15 or 20 years ago, I went to a public "feedback" hearing at Metro-North's headquarters. I stood at a podium in front of Metro-North's CEO and top executive staff, and I tried to tell them my ideas about developing the Hell Gate Line and other disused rights of way in Queens and Brooklyn.
I was nervous, for sure, because I sensed impatience and skepticism on their part almost right away. And my bright-eyed, enthusiastic presentation quickly ground to a sputtering halt. I think one of them said it would cost too much. Or that Penn Station was already at capacity. With a polite "Thank you for coming today" and a dismissive wave, that was that.
Perhaps it was the wrong time and place to bring up new ideas. I think this meet-and-greet "hearing" event with top management was meant to be a good-will public relations effort more than anything else. Unlike me, most of the people appeared to have come just to air a slew of petty gripes directly to the CEO and members of the top management team. I actually came to share some ideas, which to my disappointment, were abruptly dismissed as being far-fetched and impractical too, in so many words.
But a few years later, Metro-North began running limited stop football game specials from Connecticut and Westchester County via the Hell Gate Line to Giants Stadium in New Jersey. I was a little ticked. That was sort of like my idea! But to their credit, I never even considered sending a Metro-North consist past Penn Station, into New Jersey!
And today Governor Cuomo is calling for the expanded use of the Hell Gate Line and the building of new stations, pretty much as I tried to suggest to the head of Metro-North nearly two decades ago.
Looking back on this now, I guess I was naïve. I should have hired some celebrity with enormous credibility to speak on my behalf. Maybe Law & Order's Sam Waterston. Or Tom Hanks. People listen to them.
I'm afraid the world sees me as some kind of Dr. Emmett Brown, the crackpot professor in Back To The Future.
-------------------- Everybody has to believe in something. I believe I'll take the train! Posts: 230 | From: Ithaca, New York | Registered: May 2009
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Understand, Dave. What the passenger rail community needs more than anything is someone to do for it what Robert Moses did for automobile transportation, parks, and parkways 75 years ago. The word visionary comes to mind, but who?
-------------------- Ocala Mike Posts: 1530 | From: Ocala, FL | Registered: Dec 2006
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