How the Triboro Line Could Improve Transit for Boroughs Not Named Manhattan

A recent policy brief shares the most recent analysis by the Regional Planning Association (RPA) into the Triboro Line proposal—a circumferential transit line connecting the three New York City boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, with a possible extension to Staten Island as well.

The brief begins by establishing the need for the project:

The majority of people living in the four boroughs outside Manhattan don’t use public transit to travel to work within the boroughs, even though they live in the city with the largest subway and bus network in the U.S. Why? Because New York City’s subways were designed to bring people into Manhattan, not to move them between other boroughs, and the buses that serve the boroughs are slow and unreliable.

According to the RPA brief, the Triboro Line could potentially offer "fast, convenient and direct transit connection" between the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. The RPA first proposed the idea in A Region at Risk: The Third Regional Plan for the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut Metropolitan Area as an above-ground line, planned to take advantage of underused and abandoned rights-of-way. 

The paper includes presents the case for the line, using infographics and lots of data to back up its argument, including why the proposal relies on rail and how it would mix passenger and freight rail along its 24-mile route.