If Amazon Chooses Long Island City for a HQ2, It Could Be a Disaster

Take it from a resident: this could get messy. Here’s why.

New York City, as seen from the LIC waterfront.

On paper, Long Island City (LIC) looks like a pretty good neighborhood for an e-commerce giant’s second headquarters: It’s served by multiple subway lines, features a few empty tracts of land, and it’s smack-dab in the middle of New York City.

In reality, Amazon choosing LIC for its so-called “HQ2” could prove a disaster of epic proportions. The reason is simple: infrastructure, or lack thereof.

LIC is a perfect microcosm of the cultural and economic forces gripping the rest of New York City. It has multiple subway lines, but those lines are subject to the same hell-storm of crushing delays, breakdowns, and other issues that affect the MTA at large. Jump on the 7 train from Court Square at 8 A.M. (which will require squeezing onto a car packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people; overcrowding remains a serious issue), and chances are pretty good you’ll hit some significant delays by the time you roll into Grand Central.

Adding 25,000+ more workers (in addition to a couple of huge headquarters buildings) will only place additional strain on an already-overloaded system. There’s an additional complication: In April 2019, the MTA will shut down the L train that…