For decades, transit supporters in New York City have clamored for the Interborough Express, a passenger rail line that would wend through overlooked parts of Brooklyn and Queens, the city’s most populous boroughs, without entering Manhattan.

In April, the plan took a major step toward becoming a reality, when Gov. Kathy Hochul approved $2.75 billion for its funding, half of the project’s estimated $5.5 billion price tag. The light-rail line, the city’s first, is expected to make 19 stops, from Jackson Heights in Queens to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, in less than 40 minutes — a fraction of the time it would take with subway and bus routes. It will run alongside a 19th-century freight train route that winds past houses, beside highways, near factories and even under a cemetery.

Now, in a sign of its transformative potential, the project is gaining the attention of real estate developers, long before the first track gets laid.

More than 70,000 new homes could be built within a half mile of stops along the train line over the next decade, if some land-use changes are approved by city officials, according to an analysis released Thursday by the New York Building Congress, a trade group for construction and real estate companies.

Depending on how significantly land use is altered around the train line, the report estimates that over 100,000 units might be built over a decade.

“These are eye-popping numbers,” said Tom Wright, the president of the Regional Plan Association, an urban planning group that has been pushing for a version of the route, also called the IBX, since the 1990s.