MTA to Commence Environmental Assessment of Interborough Express Project

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) today announced it is beginning the environmental review process for the forthcoming Interborough Express (IBX) under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act. The commencement of environmental review is the first major milestone reached for the IBX after Governor Hochul’s announcement that the project had entered the preliminary engineering and design phase in August.

To kick off environmental review, there will be a series of three public meetings that will explain the scope of the project and the review process. The first will be held Wednesday, Oct. 29, at Brooklyn College. A second meeting will be held Thursday, Nov. 6 at Christ the King High School in Middle Village, Queens. A virtual meeting will be held Wednesday, Nov. 12. Members of the community interested in attending can register here.

The environmental review process will run concurrent to the ongoing preliminary design and engineering phase of the project kicked off in August. Following public outreach, the SEQRA process will produce a Draft Scoping Document, and ultimately, a draft Environmental Impact Statement on the project. This process will assess potential significant environmental benefits and impacts of the IBX project.

The Interborough Express is a generational transit investment that will connect nearly 900,000 New Yorkers in underserved areas of Brooklyn and Queens to the subway, bus and Long Island Rail Road. The project will also significantly reduce travel times between the two boroughs, with an end-to-end run time of 32 minutes along an existing 14-mile freight line owned by the MTA and CSX Corp.

In August, the MTA Board authorized the selection of a joint venture between Jacobs and HDR, who will oversee the design and engineering phase of the IBX. Project design, which got underway this summer, focuses on a light rail system design. This was determined to offer the best service to riders at the best value to the MTA, with about 70 percent of projected IBX riders expected to transfer within the MTA system. The project design work includes communications and signal design, vehicle design, track design, station design, among other components.

Once the design process is completed, the next step will ultimately create 19 stations that connect with 17 different subway lines, 50 bus routes and two LIRR stations.

-via Press Release

This article was posted on: October 15, 2025