April 25, 2016 Staff Report
Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer and members of Community Board 2 will hold a press conference Tuesday to call on the MTA to follow through with its promise of putting up noise barriers next to the LIRR tracks on Barnett Avenue.
CB 2 and the MTA first discussed putting up sound barriers along Barnett Avenue as part of the East Side Access Project nearly 10 years ago. The MTA came back to the Board and said it would put up plants to act as a barrier.
The MTA, however, told a stunned CB 2 Land Use Committee last November that the plant sound barrier was a non-starter. The agency said that there was no soil to grow plants, nor a budget to maintain them.
Lisa Deller, chair of the Land Use Committee, told MTA officials at that meeting that there are constant complaints about noise stemming from the railway line and that it was promised when the MTA took on the task to build East Side Access many years ago.
The press conference is scheduled to take place on the corner of Barnett and 45th Street at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Van Bramer, when announcing the press conference, took a shot at the MTA about the project.
“East Side Access [is] a classic example of MTA mismanagement,” he said. “The project is expected to cost $10.8 billion, $6.5 billion over the initial budget, and is now scheduled to open in 2023, 14 years later than planned.”
