be willing to exit the subway at Queens Plaza and walk a city block to a new station at Northern Boulevard to continue their trip. The NYCTA projected that this transfer would draw 11,000 passengers a day. By October 1980, officials considered stopping both projects and spending the money on maintaining the existing system. By then, the Archer Avenue project was projected for completion in 1984, and the 63rd Street line in 1985. The Times noted that the lower level of the 63rd Street tunnel was still under construction, even though it would remain unused indefinitely. Richard Ravitch, the MTA chairman, said that to stop the work was "so costly as to make it impractical subsequent to the construction of the subway portion." It "had to be finished – largely for structural reasons – to support the subway tunnel above". The line was described as a "tunnel to nowhere" because the tunnel would have one station in Queens, and because it would not connect to any other lines. In 1979, the New York City Department of Transportation and a steering committee started reexamining the New Routes program. The Queens Transit Alternatives Study was undertaken, evaluated 18 transit plans, and recommended that 5 be further evaluated. The MTA unveiled five proposals to local communities in the spring of 1983. The proposals ranged from leaving it as-is, with the line's terminus in Long Island City, to the original 1960s plan to connect the 63rd Street Line to the LIRR Main Line, the cost of which was now estimated at $1 billion. At 21st Street–Queensbridge, usage estimates for that station in 1984 were 220 passengers per hour unless a connection was made to the rest of the system. These options were formally evaluated by an Alternative Analysis/Draft Environmental Impact Statement completed by the Federal Transit Administration and the MTA in May 1984. The MTA was studying four options for making this line more useful: The Queens Express Bypass: extending the line along the LIRR Main Line to Forest Hills–71st Avenue. It would be completed in 1998 and cost $931 million. This was the original plan for this line proposed in the 1968 Program for Action. This was also the only option that the MTA felt that would add passenger and train capacity to the and express services. At a proposed station at Northern Boulevard, a transfer concourse to Queens Plaza would have allowed