The QueensWay is a community-led effort to transform a blighted, 3.5 mile stretch of abandoned railway in Central Queens into a family-friendly linear park and cultural greenway. 

The QueensWay project proposes to convert the former LIRR Rockaway Beach Branch (RBB) into a new, public park. Abandoned since 1962, the RBB used to run off the LIRR main line at Rego Park heading south via Ozone Park and across Jamaica Bay in the Rockaways. Construction of the line started in 1877 with service being initiated in various forms in the 1880s. Its full configuration between White Pot Junction and the Rockaway’s was not fully completed until the 1910s and 1920s After a series of track fires in the 1940s and 1950s on the trestles near Jamaica Bay, the cost of maintaining the service for the LIRR become infeasible.

On June 8, 1962, service was forever discontinued on the line. Since its closure in 1962, there have been many attempts to reactive the RBB via rail but, in each case, studies have concluded reactivation to be infeasible for a variety of reasons including high capital costs; resulting delays in main line trains to and from Long Island and Penn Station; increased commuter costs; environmental impacts; and detrimental effects to residents, businesses and schools that currently exist along the RBB.

The project is to create a dance facility on the site of Metropolitan Ave, a bridge over LIRR Montauk Branch, and a complete materplan for the Metropolitan Hub of the QueensWay.