Each year New York City’s public transit system keeps millions of metric tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. How will those savings be monetized to finance urgent updates and resiliency adaptations?
This summer, the Metropolitan Transit Authority made a decision both small and remarkable in one of the New York City neighborhoods most vulnerable to climate change.
The city’s public transit agency, commonly known as the MTA, rerouted the Q114 bus along the Jamaica-Far Rockaway line in Queens. The reason given at the time of the service change? “Because of frequent tidal flooding on Brookville Boulevard,” a main drag that cuts through the saltwater marsh of Idlewild Park before stretching south toward the mouth of Jamaica Bay.
This small shift was noteworthy in being the first longterm route change within the MTA’s sprawling bus and subway system that was caused by an effect of climate change: frequent “sunny day” flooding into low-lying coastal land.
