By Philip Newman
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it will need to take over 16 properties in Sunnyside either permanently or temporarily when construction begins on the $3.5 billion East Side Access transit project.
Anthony Japha, chief program executive of the project, told a public hearing last week that plans now call for Long Island Rail Road trains to begin running from Queens into Grand Central Terminal in 2011.
Japha said the disruption in Queens from the monumental project was expected to be largely limited to the Sunnyside rail yards area.
He did mention, however, that the East Side Access final Environmental Impact Statement concluded that construction could “potentially affect the learning environment” at Newcomers High School at 28-01 41st Ave. in classrooms facing the staging area on 29th Street. But the MTA said it would work with the school in an effort to mitigate the problem.
Japha said the agency would use eminent domain to acquire needed properties either temporarily or permanently but planned to negotiate first with owners of the properties. Eminent domain is the right of a government to take or authorize taking of private property for public use but with fair compensation for the owner.
The MTA said the Queens locations, “which may be acquired in their entireties” on a permanent basis, surround Sunnyside Yards and include predominantly commercial sites. There are, however, a few apartments on the list.
The proposed sites are on 43rd Street, Skillman Avenue and Northern Boulevard.
Several people at the hearing voiced objections or concerns about aspects of the project, including John Popin, an attorney representing New York Presbyterian Church in Sunnyside. Popin said the project would take away the parking lot of the church, which he said has 2,500 parishioners.
“Members of the church have promised police they would not clog the nearby streets with cars,” Popin said. “They want to keep that promise.”
The East Side project would provide nearly seven miles of new tunnels in a route from Queens to Grand Central Terminal where a new station would be built 120 feet below ground level along with a new Long Island Rail Road station in Sunnyside.
Transit activists have long insisted that a Second Avenue subway line must be built at the same time since the Lexington subway line is already crowded beyond capacity. They say thousands more riders would attempt to use the already crowded subway line once the East Side project was finished.
The MTA estimates that 161,000 daily Long Island and Queens commuters would use East Side Access, saving a half hour in travel time from Penn Station to their workplaces on Manhattan’s East Side. MTA officials contend it would reduce crowding on subway lines in Queens and lessen road traffic in Queens and on Long Island.
East Side Access is a joint project involving the MTA, the Long Island Rail Road and the Federal Transit Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Reach contributing writer Philip Newman by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 136.
