One of the more frustrating tendencies of narrow-minded NIMBYism is the knee-jerk opposition to railroad expansion in Queens and Long Island. Residents in Maspeth are already howling because Congressman Jerrold Nadler has secured 100 million federal dollars for the design of a rail-freight tunnel under the harbor, from Bayonne to Bay Ridge, a project that he has long-championed to rebuild the port of New York and bring back the region's capacity for shipping and manufacturing.

The lack of easy cross-harbor transportation caused many shipyards to close and greatly increased the use of trucks on our streets (and, with them, greatly increased pollution and asthma). The lack of high-speed, high volume shipping hastened the departure of many of Brooklyn's and Queens' factories and breweries. Televisions, spark plus, staplers, beer and so much more used to be made in New York and shipped out to the rest of the country, providing hundreds of thousands of good jobs, the sheer volume and quality of which have not been replaced by service and tourism jobs. Nadler and other port advocates believe that New York's size and geographic location still make it an efficient and cost-effective to manufacture goods and ship them around the world, and that the factories and good jobs would return if the rail and port infrastructure were in place.

Situated at an intersection of the Long Island Rail Road and one of the island's main freight railroads, Maspeth would be a crucial juncture in a regional rail freight network. "Congressman Nadler Wants 16,000 More Trucks a Day to Exit Here," screams a billboard on the LIE. While the number is in dispute, the tunnel would put more trucks in Maspeth, although the cumulative amount of truck traffic on city streets would plummet. But, Maspeth is a Republican stronghold, so Mayor Bloomberg has come out unequivocally against the project, even though his Republican predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, committed millions of dollars to feasibility studies for it.