Seriously, L train riders need to get a grip. Or, as Veep's Selina Meyer's new slogan puts it, L train riders need to "man up." The R train was closed between Brooklyn and Manhattan for over a year for Hurricane Sandy repairs and (a) we survived and (b) we didn't get this coverage. Man up Williamsburg Millennials for the love of God!
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@GinNYC THANK YOU! My dad grew up in Bushwick under bone crushing poverty when it was a slum and incredibly dangerous. I'm sure he would be amused by all of this.
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“By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience - if they did they would live elsewhere.”
E B White - Here Is New York (1948)
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Like inept dentists, the Governor’s experts have given the OK to putting a cap on a rotten tooth. By the time the shortsightedness of this decision is realized, construction costs will have doubled and Cuomo and Foye will be long gone from their current areas of responsibility.
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You wanna live on the L line, suck it up and let these people fix the dangerous issues of the transit line down there.
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If a 15 minute walk from the subway will be "very inconvenient", I think of the many underdeveloped countries where people have to walk for a hour, or several hours, just to get drinking water.
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or even just the parts of brooklyn where people generally live 15 minutes from a train.
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Living in NYC is a privilege, not a right. Don't like it? It's a big country. Feel free to head elsewhere.
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Yay! I can’t wait!
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I don't see why does 14th Street need to be closed off to all other traffic just for work on the L train tunnel. I find this very unnecessary. All this will really do is just relocate traffic everywhere else and give those streets the traffic. Some of the surrounding streets can't even handle such traffic. All that was needed to be done was just use the existing bus stops for the shuttle buses to help those get across the East River without touching the rest of the street. However, that probably won't be good for those anti-car fanatics over at Transportation Alternatives, who are probably wanted their way in order to help promote congestion pricing by creating the very traffic hence the Bloomberg Way. On a side note, I highly doubt that even the revenues from congestion pricing, assuming it passes in the end, will even help with the repairs for the tunnels especially when we already know how the MTA currently functions with their existing revenues, which is why a more thorough audit is needed before even thinking about passing it.
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@Tal Barzilai - I hear your points and gripes. But 14th Street is a hellish place to try to go across town (in a vehicle). Taking a bus across down there should not be "a joke" - which it currently is. I welcome this as an experiment, and a "we'll see" thing.
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This kind of restriction has been shown to reduce traffic overall. I think it will help make bus travel a realistic option rather than a last resort.
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You would think L riders have no alternatives. So what if they have to endure a little pain during reconstruction.
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Service on the L has been disrupted on weekends for months now. Yes, this will be an inconvenience, but probably not much different from what people are already dealing with.
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@B -- yes, in fact, with all the extra buses and trains, you may actually find it a better way to get places not near 14th St, albeit with more changes.
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Kind of sad that when L train riders are interviewed, they seem to be all from Williamsburg or Bushwick.... you know...they young and hip. How about those in Canarsie (it IS the Canarsie Line), Brownsville and East New York...do they somehow not count?
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@Alan Chaprack you are spot on. apparently neighborhoods need to be gentrified to exist in this paper...either that or they receive crime coverage...nytimes is falling woefully short in this regard
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In fairness, Brownsville and East New York will have the most alternative options (3, A C, J).
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Yup, the folks NYT interviewed are definitely from the young and hip (& mostly white) of Williamsburg and Bushwick. As a resident of Canarsie, I’m not surprised. It reminds me that water is wet.
Some of the interviewees sound whiny. The government allowed for an opportunity not to disrupt their commutes on the L train (at least not too much) with alternative 11th-hour plan because they’re mostly white and affluent and/or of the creative classes. If Broadway Junction to Rockaway Parkway was a tunnel, the perceived-working-class Black and brown people living along those parts of the line would have to suffer through just because of who they aren’t.
The work on the L train tunnel is sorely needed. Our subway system
is over 100 years old and already in need of repairs, notwithstanding the damage done during Hurricane Sandy. These gentrifiers should understand and power through. If I can do it, so can they.
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Still waiting for someone to explain to me how "slow" service on nights and weekends is worse than NO SERVICE AT ALL for more than a year.
Yes, the execution of the change was dysfunctional and highly politicized, but the original plan as conceived would have been absolutely disastrous. It's unfortunate that residents and businesses left Williamsburg prematurely, but that's not a reason to proceed with that harebrained initial proposal.
Longer wait times for trains will be annoying at times, but we've already had multiple periods of a complete shut down on nights and weekends that have lasted 1+ month in the last year, and those gave us a taste of the alternative: Shuttle buses with a poorly communicated route; the J-train on a weekend schedule; commute times that increase exponentially. Delayed service would have been a godsend then, and it's a godsend now.
I'm not much of a Cuomo fan, but this time he got it right.
Why can't we just accept this gift and find more important things to complain about?
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@Aaron
Because instead of this lasting 80 years, I will have to deal with this again when I am 50.
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I hope there will be extra police in and around the affected subway stations to keep everyone safe. I have a loved one who lives in Brooklyn and relies on the system for on-call work 24/7. Aside from incidents provoked by commuter stress, I fear predators will take advantage of the chaos and commuters seeking alternative transportation along unfamiliar routes.
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You don't change horses in midstream. I guess we should say mid-tunnel. Cuomo should have stuck with the original plan. He sacrificed a hundred year solution for something that might last 40 years if it works at all. The first 10 years will probably involve nothing but debugging the L-train's new construction. New York is dealing with a new technology completely different from the rest of the system. There are going to be problems.
Cuomo is only partially to blame though. The fault ultimately lies with residents who refuse to ever do anything in the long term interest of the transit system, subway or otherwise. I'm not saying that's everyone. However, there enough New Yorkers self-interested enough to compel Cuomo into bad decision making.
I don't do subway construction. However, I've done enough technology work to know this is like swapping out a motherboard at the last minute and expecting all the other components to work fine. New York is in for a ride. Call it karma for shafting New Yorkers 40 years from now.
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Everything about the “L train slowdown” and its last minute ingenious realization indicates that it was less a rescue of subway riders than another a sop to all-important car traffic which was about to be subjected to bus lanes and all manner of closures and limitations including fettered access to the Williamsburg Bridge. After the Governor's slowdown alternative, those measures largely could be quietly scrapped. As it is. transit users in some ways have the worse of both worlds.
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From time to time, we have to deal with changes and adjustments to the Metro here in DC. But nothing on the magnitude of what subway riders will have to deal with in NYC now and for several years to follow.
I last rode the subway in NYC in July 1995 when I spent a few days in Manhattan with a friend who lived on the Lower East Side at the time.
While NYC holds its fascination for me (first visited there in August 1971 when I was a child), I don't envy what patrons and tourists who ride the subway there will have to endure. As the Brits say: "Keep calm and carry on."
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The pain is only beginning now? That's news to me!
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I thought I was going to read the particulars (whens, wheres, and hows) of how to use the L train? Not satisfactory. This is old news.
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@Ismael Alberto
Detailed information has been available on the MTA website.
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@EdNY - Yes, and it is very detailed. In fact, you may find your alternate trip a breath of fresh air (if only the M was straighter and could move faster)
I hear more about the disruption on the L train than any temporary closure/shutdown on the London Underground. Just shut it, and get it fixed.
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"....riders are anxious about the prospect of huge crowds at busy stations and the possibility of hazardous dust, and they are uncertain how long the construction will last and whether the Monday morning commute will be disrupted."
Not to worry, foks. "Empty-suit Andy" is in charge. If anything goes wrong, he'll blame Andy Byford. You asked for him, you got him: the Democratic Trump.
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Once again, public transportation woes only matter when they affect the gentrified areas. The 7 train has has effectively been shut down every weekend for alleged service upgrades for over a decade without any noticeable improvements (with the notable exception of Mets home games). I’ve never seen the level of attention levied on the woes of the 7 train riders as on the L train.
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@Seven Queens always gets the short end of the stick in regards to mass transit improvements.
You are definitely correct about the 7 train. I started taking the 7 train back in '07. It seems like there has been perpetual construction near 33rd st and 61st over the past 10 years and never any visible improvements. It's ridiculous.
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@Seven . Same thing for the M train from Myrtle Broadway to Middle Village. After this leg had been shut down for a year for other repairs, now they still have to do track work which could have been done concurrently. M train serves ever more dispensable communities the closer it gets to Middle Village.
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@Edwin
I mean they were replacing aqueducts that were rusty and on the verge of structural failure. This is all posted on the MTA's website. In addition to replacing the aqueduct, the MTA still has to maintain signals and switches and keep the tracks clear from debris and other garbage riders throw into the trackbed.
So for the damaged aqueduct the question isn't 'How long or why' it's being replaced, but when.
Do not be mistaken by the direction of water coming into the Metropolitan Area. It isn't coming in, it is coming up under our feet. The more we drill down, the easier it will seek its level through and around the bedrock.
The tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan in which the L train runs was compromised by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The longer it takes to be fixed, increases the possibility of a collapse.
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