Long before Kathy Hochul ever said the words "Interborough Express," the idea already had a name: Triboro RX. The Regional Plan Association pitched it in 1996, in the group's Third Regional Plan, "A Region at Risk" -- a circumferential rail line built on underused freight tracks, including the Bay Ridge Branch, that would let a rider cross from Brooklyn to Queens without ever routing through Manhattan. RPA kept redrawing the map over the next two decades, and nothing moved at the MTA. The agency's first real money behind the idea didn't show up until January 2020: a $1.3 million feasibility study awarded to AECOM, with WSP, of the Bay Ridge Branch -- the freight line IBX still runs on today. "Much of the transit system in New York City was built at a time when the goal was to improve access in and out of Manhattan," RPA executive vice president Kate Slevin told Engineering News-Record. "But there's been a lot of growth and development in Brooklyn and Queens."

Hochul revived the concept in her January 2022 State of the State address, rebranding it the Interborough Express and releasing a Feasibility Study and Alternatives Analysis. That first study left almost everything open: a 14-mile corridor, connections to as many as 17 subway lines plus the LIRR -- but the mode was undecided among bus rapid transit, light rail and heavy rail, and both the station count and total cost were listed as "to be determined." The one concrete instruction was to the MTA: start environmental review. A year-long study followed, and in January 2023 Hochul picked a mode, light rail, along with the first public citation of the $5.5 billion budgeted cost. The same release flagged the corridor's equity profile: roughly seven in ten riders it would serve are people of color, and about half come from carless households.

“Much of the transit system in New York City was built at a time when the goal was to improve access in and out of Manhattan. But there's been a lot of growth and development in Brooklyn and Queens.”

By August 2023 the state had a consultant under contract to actually run that environmental review: WSP USA, hired to prepare the scoping packet, draft the EIS, and carry the project to a Record of Decision -- a separate engagement from the design contract that came later. At that point the project was still described as 19 stations, running from Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park to Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights.

The money and the engineering scope firmed up through 2024 and 2025. In September 2024 the MTA proposed $2.75 billion for IBX design and preliminary engineering inside its 2025-2029 capital plan -- a proposal that landed months after Hochul's congestion-pricing pause blew a roughly $16 billion hole in the MTA's existing capital program, drawing pushback from the Citizens Budget Commission over funding a new line while the existing system needed the money more. The state budget made that $2.75 billion real in April 2025. On Oct. 29, 2024, MTA Construction & Development issued the RFP for a General Engineering Consultant to run civil-phase preliminary engineering and procure the project's first construction contract; that same day, at a Jackson Heights press conference, the agency announced it would tunnel under All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village instead of running light rail at street level, keeping the full 14 miles in dedicated right-of-way. The MTA Board voted July 30, 2025 to award that consultant contract to a Jacobs/HDR joint venture, selected from six bidders, at just under $166 million -- the design contract now running roughly two years.

Two and a half months later, on Oct. 15, 2025, the state formally kicked off the environmental review itself: a Draft Scoping Document and three public scoping meetings opened a 30-day comment period. That review runs under New York's own state environmental process, with the MTA as sole lead agency, not the federal review a project this size might otherwise trigger. A Nov. 19, 2025 open house in Middle Village previewed the community pushback that recurred through 2026 -- residents raised eminent-domain fears and noise concerns, and an MTA project manager told the room, "We don't have the answers today, but we're still in the design phase." The map kept moving into this year: in April 2026 the MTA dropped a proposed Sutter Avenue station, cutting the count from 19 to 18, and confirmed the Middle Village tunnel.

Add up every dollar publicly committed to IBX and the total comes to roughly $2.81 billion against a $5.5 billion project -- still barely half. Beyond the $2.75 billion capital-plan allocation and $45 million in FY2026 state design funding, the ledger includes a $15 million federal RAISE grant awarded in July 2024 and a separate $1 million federal innovative-finance award. The nearly $166 million paid to Jacobs/HDR is the design contract's price tag, not new funding -- it draws against money already counted. The remaining roughly $2.7 billion has no confirmed source. The obvious federal lever, a Capital Investment Grant Hochul directed the MTA to pursue back in 2023, has gone nowhere, and the MTA is now reported to be routing around that track rather than still chasing it -- partly to keep the project clear of federal interference with New York's transit money, and partly because staying on the state-only review process avoids triggering full federal environmental review, which is the structural reason the DEIS timeline could be accelerated at all.

None of that changes the near-term schedule contractors should actually track. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement is targeted before the end of 2026; a public hearing and comment period follow, though the MTA hasn't published the exact window. Design workshops continue through 2027, tracking the same span as the Jacobs/HDR contract. Past that, the MTA has been explicit about what it won't commit to: no published construction-start date, no published completion date, for any segment of the line. MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber told reporters at a Sept. 9 Ridgewood pop-up event, first reported by amNY, that IBX "will take at least five years to complete" -- 2031 at the earliest -- even while saying the design phase itself is running ahead of schedule. That's a floor, not a target, and it's the firmest date anyone at the MTA has put on the record.

What that means today: IBX is still entirely a design-and-review project. There's no station, guideway, substation or maintenance-facility construction package out for it, confirmed against MTA Construction & Development's own live opportunities pages. But the paperwork that determines who gets a real look at the first package -- registration, bonding, certification -- doesn't wait for a bid date. For the firms willing to do it now, that's the whole game before 2027.