G, thanks.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority will shut eight subway stations across the borough — including the Flushing Avenue and Classson Avenue stops on Brooklyn’s beloved local line — for up to two months over the next few years while it gives them facelifts, leaving some straphangers stranded.
“There are no other trains where I am,” said Roberta Cook, who lives near the Flushing Avenue stop in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “For me to get anywhere, even somewhere else in Brooklyn, is pretty much impossible.”
The transit authority on Friday announced its plan to gussy up 30 stations citywide through a series of marathon construction sessions that will last between six and 12 months and will, at some point, close individual stations entirely for stretches of time ranging between six and eight weeks, according to a transit authority spokesman.
The agency has not yet decided whether it will run buses to and from the closed stations, a rep said.
Three C stations — including Clinton-Washington avenues in Fort Greene and Kingston-Throop avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant — and three R stops — Prospect Avenue in Gowanus, 53rd Street in Sunset Park, and Bay Ridge Avenue in Bay Ridge are also on the hit list.
The planned improvements are still only vaguely defined — the agency says the work will “modernize” the stations, leaving them “cleaner, brighter” and “easier to navigate,” but a rep was unable to specify exactly what the improvements will entail and when they will take place at each station.
Gov. Cuomo and the transit body simultaneously announced plans to roll out more wifi and cellphone services and mobile ticketing to subway stations across the borough, but these lofty goals are not necessarily related to the station scrub-downs.
Cook and fellow G-train regulars were dismayed to hear of the closures — many who depend on those stations to get them to work everyday could have to find a less convenient and cost-effective way to get around, said one rider.
“I’ll probably have to take an Uber,” said Sarah Suffir, who works as a therapist at PS 380 near the Flushing stop. “It’s awful.”
Suffir said she knows carriage-loads of fellow therapists, educators, and students alike who take the G train to the Marcy Avenue elementary school daily and will be at a loss when the closure kicks in.
The transit agency says the lengthy lockdowns will allow it to get repairs done more quickly — contractors will be able to get all the work done in one fell swoop, rather than doing it piecemeal on weekends or nights for shorter stints of construction over longer periods.
The majority of the stations will be totally revamped by 2018, but some will take until 2020, the body said.
