Some subway service will return to Brooklyn on Thursday — but due to the limited transit access Mayor Bloomberg canceled the much-hyped Nets home opener at the Barclays Center.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will bring limited subway service back online tomorrow — four days after trains shut down in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy — but no lines will run in lower Manhattan due to the ongoing power outage.
Instead, Gov. Cuomo announced that the agency will implement a “bus bridge” to ferry passengers between Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan, Streetsblog reports.
Starting tomorrow, the MTA will restore service to Brooklyn on:
• The R line between 95th Street and Jay Street–MetroTech.
• The M line between Myrtle Avenue–Broadway and Metropolitan Avenue.
• The A line between Jay Street–MetroTech and Lefferts Boulevard, as well as a Manhattan section between 34th and 168th streets.
• The 4 line between Borough Hall and New Lots Avenue, as well as a Manhattan and Bronx section between Woodlawn and 42nd Street.
• The 5 line between Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center and Flatbush Avenue.
• The J line between Hewes Street and Jamaica Center.
• The D line between Bay Parkway and Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center, as well as a Manhattan and Bronx section between 205th and 34th streets.
Other Brooklyn lines including the G, Q, C, and B, as well as the Brooklyn portion of the N line, remain out of service.
The incomplete transit service is the main reason the Nets won’t take the floor tomorrow night at the Barclays Center, Mayor Bloomberg said at an afternoon press conference.
“At my recommendation, the NBA has cancelled tomorrow night’s game between the Knicks and the Nets,” he said.
“It’s a great stadium, it would have been a great game, but the bottom line is there is not a lot of mass transit.”
That game needs to be rescheduled, and the Nets will instead play the first hoops game at the arena on the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues on Saturday night against the Toronto Raptors.
The renewal of subway service comes after commuter traffic came to a standstill across the borough this morning, with bumper-to-bumper situations on Fourth Avenue, Third Avenue, the Gowanus Expressway, and the East River bridges.
In an attempt to remedy the backed up traffic on the Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn bridges, the city only allow cars containing three or more occupants on all East River crossings between 6 am and midnight starting tomorrow. Taxis will be exempt from this rule between 4 pm and midnight, Bloomberg said.
The flooded Brooklyn Battery Tunnel remains closed.
Schools will remained closed for students tomorrow and Friday, Mayor Bloomberg said during an afternoon press conference. Teachers are urged to report for work on Friday.
Some 108,000 Con Edison customers remain without power in Brooklyn, according to a company spokesman.
This is a developing story and we will update as we learn more.
