Council Member Elizabeth Crowley is often coming up with what seem like bright ideas, but then never following through to make them happen. Take, for instance, her stand on burying power lines. She had a press conference with Anthony Weiner years ago, and that was as far as it went. Now she is advocating for light rail to connect Glendale, Maspeth and Middle Village with LIC and Jamaica.

There is no funding available and she had not even talked with the MTA before announcing this plan. If she had her way, there would be a park-and-ride at Atlas Park, a station behind it, and another station at Fresh Pond. The Lower Montauk Line does not go through a tunnel to Manhattan, so LIC is as far as one could ride it. Then, you’d have to transfer to an overcrowded subway such as the 7 train.

There is absolutely no funding or timeline for this project, but Crowley has said that she hopes it will spur development of residential housing where there are currently factories. This means that the loss of jobs on which the community relies is not of concern to her. And should she really be sending commuters along rails that traverse at-grade crossings that have proven to be accident prone? Also, freight rail has been increasing, not decreasing over the years. They can’t both occupy the same tracks and be efficiently run.

Maybe if Crowley instead focused on improving the public transportation options we have now – subways, local buses and express buses – we'd all get where we need to go faster.