Triboro

A trip behind and beneath the street-level skin of the city on the hidden paths of industrial history and once-and-future transit.

The Triboro Line is a 24-mile freight rail in New York City, spanning from the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Bay Ridge, to Co-Op City in the Bronx. Once largely a passenger line, the tracks have since been reduced and repurposed, and now see only intermittent industrial use. In the absence of efficient crosstown trains or subways linking the burroughs without passing through Manhattan, transit advocacy groups have long pressed for restoration of the Triboro line to commuter service. An MTA feasibility study for conversion of the former Bay Ridge Branch, the lower eleven miles of track through Brooklyn to Fresh Pond Junction, opened in early 2020, and at last, with post-Covid infrasturcture funding coming into the city and backing by the governor, the newly rechristianed Interboro Express may at last see operation. Until then, through this rocky terrain, the Triboro Line runs on, rarely observed.