The line opened on December 11, 1988, at a cost of nearly five times its original budgeted cost and cut back to a length of . It consisted of the first stations added to the subway system since the 57th Street station opened in 1968, the first stations in the entire subway system to be designed for handicapped accessibility, and the first stations in Queens since the IND Rockaway Line opened in 1956. The project's final cost was $465 million. The line's opening was hailed as a catalyst in the redevelopment of Jamaica, ending the neighborhood's urban blight.