page_title: Forest Hills–71st Avenue station
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Forest Hills–71st Avenue station / History
caption_attribution_description: English: An R train arriving at its last stop, Forest Hills - 71st Continental Ave.
context_page_description: Forest Hills–71st Avenue is an express station on the IND Queens Boulevard Line of the New York City Subway, located on Queens Boulevard at 71st Avenue in Forest Hills, Queens. It is served by the E and F trains at all times, the <F> train during rush hours in the peak direction, the R train at all times except late nights, the M train on weekdays except late nights. It serves as the terminus for the latter two services.
context_section_description: The Queens Boulevard Line was one of the first lines built by the city-owned Independent Subway System (IND), and stretches between the IND Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan and 179th Street and Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. The Queens Boulevard Line was in part financed by a Public Works Administration (PWA) loan and grant of $25 million. One of the proposed stations would have been located at 71st Avenue. During the late 1920s, in anticipation of the arrival of the subway, land was bought by developers and was built up. Zoning laws were changed to allow fifteen-story apartment buildings to be built, and made the neighborhood of Forest Hills a more desirable place to live, especially as it was an express stop. Queens Borough President George Harvey predicted that the introduction of the subway to Forest Hills would turn Queens Boulevard into the "Park Avenue of Queens."
  On December 31, 1936, the IND Queens Boulevard Line was extended by eight stops, and 3.5 miles (5.6 km), from its previous terminus at Roosevelt Avenue to Union Turnpike, and the 71st Avenue station opened as part of this extension.
  The station was proposed as a transfer station between the never-built Queens Super-Express Bypass as part of the 1968 Program for Action, which would have significantly expanded railway and subway service in the five boroughs. Under a 1984 plan, the new express station would have been one of three stops on the 63rd Street Line extension east of 21st Street–Queensbridge, the other two stops being at Northern Boulevard and Woodside. The bypass station would have had a mezzanine, two platform levels (an upper platform for Jamaica- and Southeast Queens-bound trains; a lower platform for Manhattan-bound trains), a new elevator entrance, and an expanded mezzanine, with escalators and stairs connecting the new platform levels to the existing platforms. The new station would have been built on the south side of Queens Boulevard, south of the existing station.
  In 2014, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority built a new signal tower for the Manhattan-bound platform. The agency also upgraded the station to compliance with the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act; the upgrade included passenger elevators to serve the street level, mezzanine and platforms. This project was completed by March 2014 after a three-month delay. However, a ribbon-cutting for the new elevators was not held until May 15, 2014.
caption: A Manhattan-bound R train arriving at the station.
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