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Get ready to connect the dots—or at least the neighborhoods. The MTA has officially taken its first concrete step toward building the Interborough Express (IBX), a 14-mile light-rail line linking Brooklyn and Queens, with a nearly $166 million design contract awarded to the engineering joint venture Jacobs/HDR.
The two-year deal will kickstart preliminary designs for the IBX, a project decades in the dreaming and now finally inching toward reality. Once complete, the train line will zip from Bay Ridge to Jackson Heights in under 40 minutes, connecting transit-starved communities to 17 subway lines, 50 bus routes and the LIRR, all without forcing riders through Manhattan.
“More than 5 million people live in Brooklyn and Queens,” said MTA Chair Janno Lieber in earlier statements. “We need an easier way to move between the two boroughs.” And for the roughly 900,000 residents along the route—over half of whom don’t own cars—it’s about time.
The IBX will repurpose an existing freight corridor (the Bay Ridge Branch and Fremont Secondary), so the heavy lifting isn’t laying new tracks—it’s redesigning what’s already there. The MTA plans to keep freight running while carving out space for a sleek, all-electric light-rail system with 19 stations, from Roosevelt Avenue to the Brooklyn Army Terminal.
Jacobs/HDR scored the contract over five other proposals, earning top marks for its “innovative approach” and deep understanding of corridor constraints, according to MTA board documents. The initial design phase includes environmental reviews, tunnel planning and preparing the site for eventual construction, estimated to cost $5.5 billion, with another $432 million for train cars.
Construction will be broken into two phases: first, prepping the corridor (demolitions, utility relocations and tunnel work) and second, laying tracks, building stations and creating a new maintenance yard.
But don’t expect to hop on just yet. While Governor Hochul fast-tracked early planning back in 2022, the IBX won’t be operational until the early 2030s. Still, for outer-borough residents long marooned in so-called transit deserts, this is a long-overdue promise of mobility—and maybe even a little transit equity.
The MTA is actively seeking public feedback as design work gets underway. Got thoughts? They’re all ears at [email protected].
After all, the train may not be here yet, but the tracks are—and so is the momentum.