Q&A
Coney Island ferry project history and challenges
1:15:00
·
123 sec
Council Member Brooks-Powers inquires about the feasibility of expanding ferry service to Coney Island. James Wong from EDC explains the history and challenges of the Coney Island ferry project.
- EDC started building a ferry landing in Coney Island Creek but paused work in 2021 due to navigational and safety concerns.
- Follow-up studies explored alternative opportunities for ferry service to Coney Island, both in the creek and on the ocean side.
- Significant challenges were found on both the creek side and the ocean-facing side, including high costs for necessary breakwaters.
Selvena Brooks-Powers
1:15:00
Thank you for that.
1:15:02
Next, I'm going to talk about Kony Islands.
1:15:06
I'm gonna allow counsel.
1:15:07
I'm a brand to go into the weeds of it, but I did wanna ask a couple of questions around this this pixel legislation as well.
1:15:19
As I know DOT is aware, I did a a visit out there during a past transportation infrastructure tour and learned about the dynamic with the ferry there and I wanted to know, have you conducted any internal studies about the feasibility of an expansion of a ferry in Kony Island?
James Wong
1:15:43
Yes.
1:15:43
So we actually are the Kony Island has kind of a a long history in terms of what we've looked at in connection with NYC Ferry.
1:15:52
We actually started building a ferry landing in Kony Island Creek and paused that work in 2021 because we found that you know, despite the the upfront work that we had done in design and planning for it, there remain unknown factors like shifts in sand that really caused navigational and safety concerns that would cause real issues if we were to proceed with it.
1:16:13
So We did pause work on the Coney Allen Ferry landing in 2021.
1:16:18
We also did follow-up with the community in the year and years following evaluating whether or not there were other opportunities to provide ferry service to Kony Island, whether it's in the creek or even on the ocean side.
1:16:32
We just we shared that study with the community and talked about the reality that we had found real challenges both on the creek side in and outside the sand spit, which is a sand feature in Kony Island Creek, as well as on the ocean facing side because the costs and the feasibility of building breakwaters to attenuate waves from the Atlantic Ocean was just so high that it was not financially responsible for us to proceed.