Eastern #7 Flushing Line Extension Possibilities

The Main Street station was not intended to be the Flushing Line's terminus.[71]: 49 [72] 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. In January 1913, groups representing communities in south Flushing collaborated to push for an elevated along what was then the LIRR's Central Branch,[71]: 53–55  in the current right-of-way of Kissena Corridor Park.[71]: 277  Shortly after, the New York Public Service Commission (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.[71]: 56  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.[73]

The Bayside extension was tentatively approved in June 1913, but only after the construction of the initial extension to Flushing.[71]: 61  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.[74]
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The Whitestone Branch would have had to be rebuilt if it were leased to the subway, with railroad crossings removed and the single track doubled. The PSC located 14 places where crossings needed to be eliminated. However, by early 1917, there was barely enough money to build the subway to Flushing, let alone a link to Whitestone and Bayside.[71]: 68  A lease agreement was announced on October 16, 1917,[79] but the IRT withdrew from the agreement a month later, citing that it was inappropriate to enter such an agreement at that time.[71]: 68  Thereafter, the PSC instead turned its attention back to the Main Street subway extension.[71]: 71 

Even after the Main Street station opened in 1928, efforts to extend the line past Flushing persisted. In 1928, the New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) proposed allowing IRT trains to build a connection to use the Whitestone Branch, but the IRT did not accept the offer since this would entail upgrading railroad crossings and the single-tracked line. Subsequently, the LIRR abandoned the branch in 1932.[71]: 72  As part of the 1929 IND Second System plan, the Flushing Line would have had branches to College Point and Bayside east of Main Street.[71][80][81] That plan was revived in 1939.[82] The BOT kept proposing an extension of the Flushing Line past Main Street until 1945, when World War II ended and new budgets did not allow for a Flushing extension. Since then, several New York City Transit Authority proposals for an eastward extension have all failed.[71]: 72 
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