Proponents of the Harlem River Greenway Project — which aims to connect Van Cortlandt Park in the Northwest Bronx to Randall’s Island through a continuous seven-mile greenway path — are concerned that the former Putnam Line west of the Major Deegan, which the MTA uses as a maintenance yard, could throw a wrench into the project.
Construction of the greenway will be broken into three parts: Van Cortlandt Park to the University Heights Bridge, the University Heights Bridge to the Macombs Dam Bridge and the Macombs Dam Bridge to the Randall’s Island Connector. The city is allocating $1 million for the project’s planning. Construction costs, according to city officials, will depend on the contours of the plan that’s crafted in the coming months.
The former Putnam train line, nicknamed the Old Put, limits the greenway plans, project advocates say, from a stretch of the old line from Van Cortlandt to 230th Street, forcing the greenway onto local streets.
The Old Put was once a commuter rail route, last carrying passengers in 1958, but MTA officials told the Bronx Times that the remaining stub near the Marble Hill station now houses maintenance trains from the Grand Central Madison terminal after it fully opened service to the Long Island Rail Road in February.
“So the Long Island Railroad customers, who are suburbanites, get this fantastic benefit of a direct line to Grand Central, while the Bronx gets the garbage from the project,” said Robert Fanuzzi, president of the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality. “So we want to know how will MTA be a good neighbor because they own crucial links of a future Greenway.”
There will be three workshops on April 18, 19 and 26, in which the city Department of Transportation (DOT) will solicit feedback from the public on the various segments of the greenway project. MTA officials told the Bronx Times that they wanted to wait until after the workshops, and for concrete plans for the segment, before…
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