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Trains on the Brooklyn Bridge?

Posted by: Tim Halbur

23 May 2008 - 11:00am

In the early days, trolleys and trains carried 400,000 passengers a day over the Brooklyn Bridge. With continued growth in pedestrian traffic, a former transit commissioner says a rail renaissance might not be so far-fetched.

"'People took trains across the bridge,' says former Transportation Commissioner Sam Schwartz. 'At one point, there were four tracks across the bridge. More than 400,000 people a day in those early decades used the Brooklyn Bridge every single day.'"

"'The Brooklyn Bridge walkway is getting so popular that we may have to begin to think, How do we accommodate all the pedestrians? Should we put the roads on a diet? Should we introduce some kind of transit service? Probably not a bus service, but maybe it will be a light rail service going across the bridge,' says Schwartz. 'So in the next 75 years ‘til its bicentennial, I think the bridge probably will go back to a more transit-oriented bridge.'"

Full Story: Brooklyn Bridge Could Become More Transit-Oriented In Future
Source: NY1 News, May 22, 2008
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