These efforts, which come as the amount of goods being shipped through the city by some freight railroads continues to increase, have won praise from some transportation advocates and residents who see rail as an alternative to the fleets of trucks congesting roadways and spewing fumes into surrounding communities. “We’re in support of it,” said Monxo Lopez, a member of South Bronx Unite, which has cited truck traffic in opposing the move of the online grocer FreshDirect to the Bronx. “But it has to be tied up with concrete traffic reductions and community involvement.”

City officials have also said that freight rail is good for the economy, because it gives local companies an option for transporting goods that could be significantly cheaper over long distances than using trucks.

But some communities have raised concerns that trains, too, produce noise and fumes. In 2009, more than a dozen civic groups in Queens banded together to form Civics United for Railroad Environmental Solutions to call for reducing the impact of freight trains. “Whatever expansion is taking place is certainly going to have a more negative effect on those living near the freight rail lines,” said Gary Giordano, district manager for Queens Community Board 5.

The expanding freight rail network is the culmination of decades of efforts, some unsuccessful, across the city and region. “There’s been all kinds of resistance,” said United States Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat representing parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn who has long pushed to expand freight rail. “Rail fell out of use, and people just didn’t see it anymore.”