The final report on the Lower Montauk Light Rail Study was released by the DOT in January recently and it revealed that the project, if undertaken, would cost $2B to build (not “under $100M as was once claimed), $55M to operate, and would only raise $15M/year in revenue. Only 21,000 riders per day were projected along the entire line. When former council member Elizabeth Crowley hosted a town hall with the mayor back in December, de Blasio informed the audience that the plan would not be happening due to its fiscal infeasibility. Why did she waste $1/2M in taxpayer money on a study when its conclusion could have been predicted with plain old common sense? The worst part of this is that Crowley continues to push for the selling of MTA air rights to finance the construction of the line which would bring tens of thousands more housing units to the very neighborhoods that she has taken credit for downzoning. She also has the audacity to claim that 5 community boards approved the plan, when all they actually did was authorize the feasibility study. In fact, CB5 District Manager Gary Giordano told the Queens Chronicle upon reading the results: “These projections for how many riders there would be, it’s just too expensive — from what I’m reading — to justify it. The estimation alone for annual revenue versus annual operating cost is very significant.”