How A Resurrected Station Plan Can Bring A Boom To The Bronx
How A Resurrected Station Plan Can Bring A Boom To The Bronx
The Bronx is home to sights, sounds, and culture. Unfortunately, there isn’t exactly a way to easily see most of it. You see the Bronx, like many other black & brown communities in America, is what we call a transit desert. While the Bronx has many buses they are at their best, slow and inadequate. And most of the subway only really reaches select parts of the borough.
Google map of metro system in the Bronx
Much of the western and middle portions of the Bronx are left with few transit options for its residents. The center of the Bronx is especially affected by this as many of the economic centers and sites are positioned in that section. This is due to the elevated train line that once ran over 3rd Ave. Its position made it possible to build many major shopping hubs and destinations. But when it was destroyed in the 70s it caused a hole in transit still felt.
Old Third Ave EL train
In its day the elevated line could take you to the Hub (a major shopping district), the old courthouse, the Old Borough Hall on Tremont, and Bronx Park home to the Bronx Zoo & NY botanical garden. As the Bronx population continues to grow this lack of transit will only exacerbate many of the issues plaguing the borough. It also affects the growing city as land useful for growth never unlocks its potential due to inaccessibility. Not only that, but it also means that people in these communities who go on to earn higher-paying jobs will be incentivized to move to places with more access to better transit as opposed to staying in their own community and generating economic growth there. Those who do tough it out and stay will then be forced to rely on personal vehicle use that only hurts the environment and contributes to the Bronx’s high asthma rate.”
Luckily there is still one service that with one simple tweak can easily fix many of these problems and open much of the Bronx to economic development. This is the Metro North that runs through many of the Bronx’s most transit-starved areas.
New Metro North Station and Existing Lines
This commuter rail network while present is very inaccessible. The train system doesn’t connect to any of the subway lines in the borough and access to both lines at the same time requires a person going down to Manhattan to transfer. So, if someone on the west side of the Bronx wanted to plan a trip to the botanical garden, they would have to pay a $5 fare to go to 125th Street station and then pay another $5 fare to go back up the other line. Instead of being able to take advantage of the $3 fare for in-Bronx travel that the metro north offers. But this wasn’t always the case.
Once upon a time, there was a major station in the Bronx that allowed you to transfer to both metro north lines (at the time NY Central rail) and onto the subway. This was Mott Haven station at 138th Street and the Grand Concourse. It stood there for decades but was eventually torn down to build a bigger station up the street. The planners at the time saw 149th Street as a more useful train hub. This was because of the multiple subway lines that run through that street.
Old 138st central railroad station
Mott Haven Junction station would have been a great work of art and engineering. Possibly in a world where it was completed, it would have been a tourist attraction like Grand Central. Millions would have graced its halls to take the 4,5 and two trains as well as the metro north.
Original 1907 Plan
The Railway Age. (1907). United States: Railway Age Publishing Company.
Ultimately the only thing that came of the plans was the construction of the tunnels connecting the supposed train house to the station at 149th street grand concourse IRT lines. Those tunnels are still sitting there sealed off by a wall, but you can still see their presence by looking at the mosaic pointing to the connection that never was as you transfer from the 4 to the 2 or 5.
149st station
The land that would be needed to construct these stations is still there in both cases. And the need has only increased as Mott Haven has seen rapid development in the past few years. Either of these stations could create a massive transit hub and spur development around the station and the lines that run the metro north. If the Mott Haven Junction plan is restarted it could add a large amount of transfer options with 3 subway lines, 2 metro north lines, and 3 bus routes. It could become the Bronx equivalent of Grand Central station. A similar project to this has commenced in Brooklyn with Broadway Junction which according to the office of the mayor would cost $500M but is estimated to generate $11.6 billion of economic investment for the neighborhood. So why not have that level of investment in the city's most underserved neighborhoods? This project, if done, can revitalize the South Bronx into the pinnacle of modern transit, housing, and commerce.
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