MTA’s proposed Interborough Express (IBX) light-rail project is currently being designed to occupy the Bay Ridge Branch Railroad (BRBRR) Right-of-Way (ROW). The scope of the IBX project should, however, be expanded to include design and construction of the Cross Brooklyn Greenway (CBG) alongside it.
Thirty-five years ago, pedestrian and bicycling advocates proposed building a continuous Greenway trail in this ROW. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive, they can both be achieved together in the same corridor. There are many successful examples of rails-with-trails across the country, including in New York. The CBG must, however, be built with the IBX. If it is not, it will certainly never maximize its potential, if it is ever built at all.
Use of the BRBRR ROW for the CBG first appears in the 1993 New York City Department of Planning Report.
The CBG reappears in the August 2025 Greater Greenways; the New York City Greenway Plan, developed collaboratively by the New York City Departments of Transportation, Parks and Recreation and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
The existing ROW is wide enough to accommodate both facilities. Adding the CBG to the IBX project would add cost, but that cost would be significantly less than the cost to build the CBG from scratch as an afterthought.
The BRBRR ROW is not flat. South and west of 14th Avenue the railroad is in a deep cut below grade, and north and east of 14th Avenue it is elevated on an embankment. Building the CBG will likely require the construction of retaining walls (with associated cuts and fills) to convert portions of existing sloped embankments into ‘level’ surfaces for the greenway trail.
Ideally, the greenway trail would be built at the same elevation and right next to adjacent streets so that it is always directly physically and visually accessible. By contrast, the light rail is best placed in the middle of the ROW at the bottom of the existing cut or on top of the existing embankment, thus grade separated from adjacent sidewalks and buildings to mitigate noise and prevent direct access.
Curving across Brooklyn as it does, the BRBRR traverses multiple street grids, connecting numerous arterial travel routes radiating out from Downtown Brooklyn. No other Brooklyn transportation corridor in Brooklyn does this except Kings Highway. As such, like the IBX, the CBG would be an economic catalyst. It would link important trip generators connecting residential neighborhoods to shopping, jobs, educational facilities, major parks and recreation facilities.
Importantly, the ROW passes through some of the borough’s least green and most park-starved neighborhoods, such as Brownsville and East New York, places that Image: 2022 MTA IBX Feasibility Study. Now Picture a Bicycle/Pedestrian Path Running Alongside It. suffer some of the highest rates of chronic disease in the city. Building the CBG is an important environmental justice and health equity project.
The CBG would provide easy biking and walking access to the Brooklyn waterfront from these landlocked interior neighborhoods along a car-free path that includes trees, plantings, benches, drinking fountains, public toilets, exercise stations, food vending kiosks, and green infrastructure for sustainable stormwater management. The CBG as imagined would be more than a simple walking and bicycling path, it would be a linear park linking neighborhoods across the borough to each other and to the IBX, thus facilitating multi-modal travel options.
Properly designed and adequately funded, the CBG will be a safe, attractive, green and shady environment for walking, biking, recreation, stormwater management, and nature preservation. The collateral benefits that would accrue to the surrounding neighborhoods from a facility of this type are obvious. Air quality will improve, ambient temperatures will drop, flooding will decrease, people will be healthier, happier and more connected to each other and their city.
Jackson Wandres is a life-long resident of Brooklyn and a licensed urban architect and planner who has worked as a civil servant at the Departments of Park and Recreation, City Planning and Design and Construction, as well as a private consultant for over 35 years.
