"In the end, New York’s MTA and D.C.’s Metro were the only transportation networks capable of handling such an influx of new residents. But both cities will have some work to do.
Like an extra-long, extra-schlocky season of
The Bachelor, the signs were there from the start.
Those who tuned in from the very first episode of Amazon’s hunt for an HQ2 may recall one telling element of the initial bid for its next quarters outside of Seattle: The tech giant wanted good transportation. Wherever Amazon landed, direct access to trains and buses, in addition to highways and airports, would be critical. So in that sense, this season’s twist ending — it picked New York City
and the Washington, D.C. suburbs — was no surprise. These are two of the best-connected transportation cities in the United States....
Few other cities on the shortlist of final contenders could have reasonably absorbed the influx of 50,000 workers on their existing transportation networks—which is why the news of transit’s primacy
came as a reality check for otherwise strong candidates....
From a mobility perspective, the company also chose its Gotham location wisely. It will settle in one million feet at 1 Court Square in Long Island City, a formerly industrial section of the Queens waterfront that has undergone a rapid condo-fication over the past decade. It’s well connected to the 7 train, one of the few lines that have benefited from partial automation and other recent upgrades, and also the G, which runs more reliably than other lines. The E, M, F, R, N, and W are all nearby, too.
And there’s even a wild-card mode in the mix: Long Island City would be along the path of the proposed
Brooklyn Queens Connector, a $2.7 billion streetcar project proposed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to run a low-capacity, low-speed light-rail line from Red Hook in Brooklyn up to Queens* along the two boroughs’ formerly industrial, now heavily gentrifying waterfronts. Amazon’s HQ2 siting has thrilled the Friends of the BQX, since the project has been considered all-but-dead for the past year."
So you see, doubters, gentrification has been going on for a decade. Where was Ocasio-C all that time? So all the money spent on the BQX was going to waste and Amazon gave it life. How horrible. 50,000 people coming in to spend money and help make Queens a better place to live than it's long reputation as a dump.
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