(rshsdepot) Sunnyside, NY

[Bernie Wagenblast <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

Praise for Multipurpose
LIRR-Grand Central Link

By DONALD BERTRAND
Daily News Staff Writer

The Long Island Rail Road station planned for the Sunnyside Yards will be
similar to the line's Woodside station, a top transit official revealed.

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney conducts a meeting at the Citicorp Building in
Long Island City to discuss the East Side Access project.
"This new station will be a station configured so that trains can stop at it
not only in the peak period, in the peak direction, as they do today at
Hunters Point Ave. in Long Island City, but both directions all times of the
day," said Pamela Burford, the Metropolitan Transit Authority's director of
planning for the LIRR East Side Access.
The station, Burford said, would function "much more like the LIRR Woodside
Station."
The MTA official made the remarks at a meeting held by Rep. Carolyn Maloney
(D-Manhattan, Queens) at the Citicorp Building in Long Island City on Monday
night.
Called Federal Investments in Transportation for Queens, the meeting brought
together a number of transportation officials and legislators.
"In last year's appropriation bill, Congress put almost $15million in for
the East Side Access, and this year I'll be fighting for more - particularly
when we start negotiating the federal government's five-year capital
program," Maloney said.
The East Side Access project would allow LIRR trains to come into Grand
Central Terminal, relieving Penn Station of some traffic and shaving 15 to
30 minutes off commuting time for those heading to the East Side.
The planned new station would be on the LIRR main line, connecting with Penn
Station.
Sunnyside station would have a center platform and two side platforms with
connections directly to the Queens Blvd. Bridge, as well as a connection to
Skillman Ave., Burford said.
"We have sited the station in a way that, ultimately if they chose, Amtrak,
NJTransit and Metro-North could also stop at this station," said the MTA
planner.
The station location is "much closer to what we call the business of Long
Island City and Sunnyside," Burford says.
Pedestrian-Link Study
"While it may appear that this station is in the middle of nowhere, it is
really placed so that it can have a maximum level of service as possible and
really function as an origin and destination station in its own right," said
Burford, who has worked on the East Side Access for the past 11 years.
The MTA, she said, also has started a Sunnyside station
pedestrian-connection study.
The study, which she also manages, will seek ways to connect the station's
pedestrian traffic across the yard and link it to the existing Queens Plaza
and Queensboro Plaza subway stations.
The East Side Access project will create a new track and platform level
below the present lower level of Grand Central Terminal.
It will do that by making connections to the 63rd St. tunnel, built as a
two-level tunnel - two tracks over two tracks.
In Queens, a tunnel will go from the LIRR main-line tracks beneath the
Sunnyside yards, where NJTransit and Amtrak store trains during the day, and
beneath the Long Island yard known as Yard A, formerly used for freight
service in Long Island City, and connect to the existing tunnel just north
of Northern Blvd. about 41st St.
"The lower level has been empty and waiting for the LIRR to make connections
to it now for almost 30 years," Burford said.

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