As a Queens native, I'm much more inclined to think that the reason Greenwald hints at the end of the article ("As white flight and urban decline escalated in t

As a Queens native, I'm much more inclined to think that the reason Greenwald hints at the end of the article ("As white flight and urban decline escalated in the late 1960s, Queens identified more and more with Long Island, isolating Brooklyn further still.") was to blame. Though one side of my family didn't completely leave Brooklyn until the early 70s, the other side actually got out in the early 50s. This is probably related to the parts of Brooklyn they lived in. That said, the changes in transit almost definitely had an impact, and i would guess that the two phenomena had a sympathetic effect on each other.