page_title: Flushing–Main Street station (IRT Flushing Line)
section_title: Proposed extension of the line
hierarchical_section_title: Flushing–Main Street station (IRT Flushing Line) / History / Proposed extension of the line
caption_attribution_description: Downtown Flushing
context_page_description: Flushing–Main Street is the eastern terminal on the IRT Flushing Line of the New York City Subway, located at Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue in downtown Flushing, Queens. It is served by the 7 local train at all times and the <7> express train during rush hours in the peak direction.
  The Flushing–Main Street station was originally built as part of the Dual Contracts between the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation. It opened on January 21, 1928, completing the segment of the Flushing Line in Queens. Although plans existed for the line to be extended east of the station, such an extension was never built. The station was renovated in the 1990s. In 2018, it was the busiest single subway station in Queens, the busiest station outside of Manhattan, and the 11th busiest subway station in the system.
context_section_description: The station was not intended to be the Flushing Line's terminus. While the controversy over an elevated line in Flushing was ongoing in January 1913, the Whitestone Improvement Association pushed for an elevated to Whitestone, College Point, and Bayside. However, some members of that group wanted to oppose the Flushing line's construction if there was not going to be an extension to Whitestone. After the January 20 vote to demand that the subway line through Flushing be built underground, groups representing communities in south Flushing collaborated to push for an elevated along what was then the LIRR's Central Branch, in the current right-of-way of Kissena Corridor Park. Eleven days later, the PSC announced its intent to extend the line as an el from Corona to Flushing, with a possible further extension to Little Neck Bay in Bayside. There was consensus that the line should not abruptly end in Corona, but even with the 5.5-mile-long (8.9 km) extension to Bayside, the borough would still have fewer Dual Contracts route mileage than either Brooklyn or the Bronx. The New York Times wrote that compared to the Bronx, Queens would have far less subway mileage per capita even with the Flushing extension.
  The Bayside extension was tentatively approved in June 1913, but only after the construction of the initial extension to Flushing. Under the revised subway expansion plan put forth in December 1913, the Flushing Line would be extended past Main Street, along and/or parallel to the right-of-way of the nearby Port Washington Branch of the LIRR towards Bell Boulevard in Bayside. A spur line would branch off north along 149th Street towards College Point.
  In 1914, the PSC chairman and the commissioner committed to building the line toward Bayside. However, at the time, the LIRR and IRT were administered separately, and the IRT plan would require rebuilding a section of the Port Washington branch between the Broadway and Auburndale stations. The LIRR moved to block the IRT extension past Flushing since it would compete with the Port Washington Branch service in Bayside. One member of the United Civic Association submitted a proposal to the LIRR to let the IRT use the Port Washington Branch to serve Flushing and Bayside, using a connection between the two lines in Corona. The PSC supported the connection as an interim measure, and on March 11, 1915, it voted to let the Bayside connection be built. Subsequently, engineers surveying the planned intersection of the LIRR and IRT lines found that the IRT land would not actually overlap with any LIRR land. The LIRR president at the time, Ralph Peters, offered to lease the Port Washington and Whitestone Branches to the IRT for rapid transit use for $250,000 annually (equivalent to $6,320,000 in 2019), excluding other maintenance costs. The lease would last for ten years, with an option to extend the lease by ten more years. The PSC favored the idea of the IRT being a lessee along these lines, but did not know where to put the Corona connection. Even the majority of groups in eastern Queens supported the lease plan. The only group who opposed the lease agreement was the Flushing Association, who preferred the original Flushing subway plan.
  Afterward, the PSC largely ignored the lease plan since it was still focused on building the first phase of the Dual Contracts. The Flushing Business Men's Association kept advocating for the Amity Street subway, causing a schism between them and the rest of the groups that supported the LIRR lease. Through the summer of 1915, the PSC and the LIRR negotiated the planned lease to $125,000 a first year, equivalent to $3,160,000 in 2019, with an eight percent increase each year; the negotiations then stalled in 1916. The Whitestone Improvement Association, impatient with the pace of negotiations, approved of the subway under Amity Street even though it would not serve them directly. The PSC's chief engineer wrote in a report that a combined 20,600 riders would use the Whitestone and Bayside lines each day in either direction, and that by 1927, there would b
caption: Flushing Line tunnel portal at College Point Boulevard
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