BQX streetcar backers survey public housing along the route
Thousands interviewed personally confirm: 'We want better transit'
On a cold evening in late October, as most New Yorkers were returning home from work, Kristina Gonzalez began knocking on doors inside the Red Hook Houses. This collection of 28 brick buildings is one of the largest public housing complexes in New York City, and also one of the most isolated. To get to the nearest subway, residents have to walk more than a half mile and cross underneath the Gowanus Expressway, which cut off the neighborhood from the rest of Brooklyn when it opened in the 1940s. In ensuing decades, residents have made due with cars, waiting for unpredictable bus service, or hiking to Carroll Gardens for the F or G train.
And that’s what Gonzalez wanted to talk about with residents of Red Hook Houses. She was canvassing for the Brooklyn-Queens Connector, a proposal introduced last year to build a 16-mile streetcar system, known as the BQX, stretching from Astoria to Sunset Park with likely stops in Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Dumbo, Downtown Brooklyn, Cobble Hill and Red Hook.