We Can't Afford Streetcars in Red Hook, City Says

The city Department of Transportation has made it official: putting streetcars in Red Hook, Brooklyn, would cost too much to justify small gains in ridership over the existing B61 bus.

The proposed line would connect Red Hook to the Smith and 9th Street station of the F and G subway trains, and to Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn. But a department study, released Wednesday, called the project prohibitively expensive: $176 million to build and nearly $7 million a year to maintain.

The department said the investment would bring only 12 percent more riders than the local bus route already carries. That's because the study assumes that with Red Hook car ownership rates barely breaking 20 percent, most people already take mass transit.

Other problems identified by the study were the cost of moving utilities beneath the new line, removing parking and sidewalk corners to accommodate streetcars' wide turns and a lack of mixed-use and high-density zoning in Red Hook, which would stymie most of the economic development such transportation investments are expected to bring. The study even questioned the visual impact of the streetcars' overhead wires on historic districts in Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights.

"Everyone that I know who lives here feels like we could use more and that cuts that keep happening are taking away service that's not quite adequate anyway," said Sarah Luddington, an architect.

The city undertook the study because Mayor Michael Bloomberg promised during his 2009 re-election campaign to pilot a streetcar line along the Brooklyn or Queens waterfront. Spokesman for the mayor, Stu Loeser, said that with the end of the Red Hook plan and expected cuts in federal and state transportation aid, there would be no streetcars on the waterfront in the near future.

Loeser said that sometimes promised services must be dropped in the face of budget constraints and other factors.

"As you may be able to see from other campaign accountability report cards we put out," he said in an email, "if there's a better way to reach a goal, we consider it." He added: "Mayor Bloomberg is still the only elected official who puts these [report cards] out."

Community Board 6 district manager Craig Hammerman said at least the study brought attention to the Red Hook's isolation: "There is extreme disappointment from community representatives," he said. "But I think that at the end of the day, we've caught the city's attention."

Hammerman said the city is now talking about improving service on the B61 bus and upgrading the streetscape along the long walk residents make to get to and from the subway in Carroll Gardens.