NYC ferry expansion set for summer of 2017

The first phase of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposed citywide ferry service — with routes serving Astoria and the Rockaways in Queens as well as south Brooklyn — will be ready for passengers in early summer 2017, city officials said Thursday.

Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen, at an Astoria event Wednesday night, said the project is “well underway,” with docks under construction.

“The East River will no longer be something we must navigate over and under,” she said, according to remarks provided by City Hall. “It will be how we navigate a re-imagined and revitalized waterfront.”

Glen said at the Astoria meeting that the first three routes will be ready to launch in June, according to news website DNAinfo. She was updating the Queens community on initiatives proposed in de Blasio’s State of the City speeches.

Mayoral spokesman Austin Finan didn’t commit Thursday to a specific month or date for the launch, saying, “As we’ve said previously, early summer is our general goal for the launch of citywide ferry service.”

The five-borough service aims to build on an existing East River route and ferries between lower Manhattan and Staten Island.

A second phase — routes for Soundview in the Bronx and the Lower East Side — is slated for completion in 2018.

Once all the planned ferries are running, they are projected to make 4.6 million trips annually. Construction is estimated to cost $55 million.

For the price of a MetroCard fare, passengers will be able to use five routes from 21 waterfront landings, Glen said.

The citywide ferry service was first unveiled in de Blasio’s 2015 State of the City address.