MTA representatives appeared before Community Board 14 at the Knights of Columbus in Rockaway Beach last week to preview the Rockaway Rehabilitation and Resiliency Project, a 44-month construction project that will redesign and rebuild much of the peninsula’s existing transportation infrastructure.
The project, scheduled to start later this year and finish in the summer of 2026, will repair the Rockaway Viaduct, Hammels Wye Viaduct and South Channel Bridge, while also adding a signal tower to Beach 105th Street in Rockaway Park. This undertaking by the MTA is inspired by Hurricane Sandy, which resulted in seven months of repair to the train tracks to get them back in service from late 2012 to early 2013.
“It was a tremendous feat in such a short period of time,” said Deirdre Harvey, the project CEO at MTA Construction & Development. “We’re here to try to make the line even more resilient so we don’t have such an interruption in the future.”
During the project’s construction, south Queens residents will face service interruptions for the A-train and the Rockaway Park shuttle, starting later this year as the MTA works on the tracks at Broad Channel and Howard Beach.
The project will then eventually move toward major structural repairs at the Hammels Wye Viaduct, where the A-train and Rockaway Park shuttle separate, and South Channel Bridge, which connects both of these lines from Broad Channel to the Rockaway peninsula. As a result, there will be a required 16-week shutdown of service from January 2025 to May 2025.
Alternates modes of commuting during this period include a non-stop bus shuttle from Far Rockaway to the Howard Beach-JFK Airport station, a local bus shuttle from Beach 67th Street and Broad Channel to the Howard Beach-JFK Airport station, and a subway shuttle that goes across the peninsula between Rockaway Park and Far Rockaway.
The MTA representatives said they would also “enhance” the existing bus service in the area,…
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