Brooklyn's Progress
August/September 2005

The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce supports the creation of a second transit hub in Downtown Brooklyn for the proposed JFK Rail Link.  During the Chamber’s annual Lobbying Trip, the organization advocated on behalf of a second station to provide access to jobs, economic gains, and travel time savings.  Brooklyn Chamber President Kenneth Adams supported Michael Burke, Executive Director of the Downtown Brooklyn Council, during testimony on July 19 before the Lower Manhattan-Jamaica/JFK Transportation Project Scoping Session at Brooklyn Borough Hall.  Following is Michael Burke’s testimony:

My name is Michael Burke and I am the Executive Director of the Downtown Brooklyn Council.  The Downtown Council is a planning and advocacy organization representing the business, real estate and institutional leadership of Downtown Brooklyn.  Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the EIS scope for the Lower Manhattan transportation access project.

Improving the City’s transportation links to both JFK and the suburbs is a critically important infrastructure improvement. As the second and third largest commercial districts in the region, Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn should both benefit from this proposed project.  Yet in the most publicized scenario for this project, only one transit station is proposed on the periphery of Downtown Brooklyn, in the vicinity of Atlantic Terminal.

In order for this project to fully benefit both Downtown Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, we strongly believe it must include two transit stations in Downtown Brooklyn—one at the current Atlantic Terminal and a second station in the MetroTech/Civic Center area.  Our reasoning for two stations is based on projected job growth in the area; greater economic gains from two stations instead of one; and greater travel time savings from two stations.

Access to Jobs
Downtown Brooklyn is the third largest commercial district in the city, and plays a key role in the city’s job creation strategy.  Currently in Downtown Brooklyn only 1 in 16 job-holders are within a 5-minute walk from the Atlantic Terminal station and only 1 in 5 are within a 10-minute walk.  If a second transit station were located today at the nexus of development in Downtown Brooklyn near Borough Hall /MetroTech, more than 7 in 10 jobs would be located within a 5-minute walk and more than 9 in 10 would be within a 10-minute walk.

But more importantly, development and job creation trends for Downtown Brooklyn project that over 35,000 new jobs will be added to the area over the next 20 years.  Of these, five to seven thousand will be located within a short walk of Atlantic Terminal, which shows a clear need to maintain this station as a transit hub. However over 20,000 jobs will be created in the Borough Hall/MetroTech area, further strengthening the downtown core as both the primary job generator of the Borough and as the primary source of ridership for a LIRR/JFK transit hub.

Furthermore, with most of the current and projected commuters from Southeastern Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties working in the Borough Hall/MetroTech area, access to jobs in the Downtown Brooklyn core alone could be justification for a second LIRR/JFK transit hub.  Nevertheless, we do have other compelling reasons to support a second station in Downtown Brooklyn.

Economic Gains
We’ve completed an analysis of projected economic gains to Brooklyn and the city as a result of adding a second transit station in the core of Downtown Brooklyn.  The details of this analysis will be submitted shortly in a lengthier report.  But let me briefly summarize the results of our analysis.

The economic value of shortening the commuting time for the labor force working in Downtown Brooklyn and for those who would make the trip for other purposes with the addition of a second station is estimated to be $13.8 million in 2005 and $15.7 million in 2025, both in current dollars.  Most of these gains would be among Long Island and Southeastern Queens commuters.  To this is added the value gained by those who ride the new service between the second downtown station and JFK airport; approximately $2.7 million for every 100 trips made in each direction between Downtown Brooklyn and JFK airport.

With a second downtown station there would be a one-time gain of approximately $35 million in Downtown Brooklyn property values and a gain of about $4.3 million per year in tax revenues resulting from the higher property values. 

To estimate the economic gains of a second Downtown Brooklyn station the annual benefits were converted to their present value and the one-time gains were added in.  The benefits would average approximately $16 million annually over the life of the project, including $5.4 million in benefits for airport related trips and $4.3 million in property tax benefits.  The present worth of these combined benefits is nearly ¾ of a billion dollars in economic gains to Brooklyn and New York City.

Travel Time Savings
There are two Downtown Brooklyn-based markets that would theoretically benefit from this project – trips from Long Island Rail Road commuting territory in Southeastern Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties, and trips to and from JFK Airport.

The average Long Island Rail Road commuter destined for Downtown Brooklyn would gain only a two minute savings during peak travel with only one Downtown Brooklyn station.  The trip would still end at Atlantic Terminal leaving most commuters far from their Brooklyn destinations.  But these commuters would gain substantially with a second downtown station, which would shave off about 6 minutes from their travel time.  Those destined for jobs near Borough Hall and MetroTech would gain still more bringing their commutes from Jamaica Station to about 28 minutes.  This compares to a 41 minute commute if there is only one transit hub at Atlantic Terminal.  

Travel to JFK airport would also show significant time savings.  Today, travel between JFK airport and Downtown Brooklyn requires an average of about 60 minutes, whether using the AirTrain/LIRR combination with a transfer at Jamaica Center or via AirTrain to Howard Beach and the A train subway line.  The one-station option would shave off an average of about 8 minutes in the peak and up to 20 minutes at nights and weekends.  The addition of a second downtown station would drop this time savings another 6 minutes, bringing the peak hour trip down to about 46 minutes.  The savings for destinations in the core of Downtown Brooklyn would be still greater, with savings of about 14 minutes compared to the trip without the new station.   A trip from the Downtown Brooklyn core area would require just 37 minutes to Terminal One at JFK.

Conclusion
These three issues—access to jobs, economic gains, and travel time savings—strongly justify the creation of a second transit hub in the Downtown Brooklyn core.  The EIS must study and seriously consider alignments in Downtown Brooklyn that include two transit stations: one at the current Atlantic Terminal and a second in the vicinity of Borough Hall/MetroTech.  Numerous alignments in Downtown Brooklyn would allow for this, either by using existing MTA tunnels or by building new ones.  And all of these possible alignments achieve the ultimate goal of connecting the Lower Manhattan business district to the Long Island and JFK commuting network.

As I mentioned before, the Downtown Brooklyn Council will be submitting a more detailed report on all of our recommendations soon.  Thank you for this opportunity to present our testimony, and we look forward to working with the city, state and our partners in Lower Manhattan to ensure that this critical project benefits all of our communities.