G train riders are seeing signs all over the place.
That is because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has added platform indicators that show straphangers where exactly the stubby Brooklyn Local will stop in all 18 G stations. Commuters accustomed to dashing after the diminutive train were over the moon about the improvement.
“They made my daily commute better for sure,” said Connor Mealey, a Greenpointer and a member of the Rider’s Alliance, which pushed to improve the G.
The four-car G train takes up only half the length of the platform in all of its stations, causing confusion for riders who sometimes sit and marvel, expecting the train to stop, only to have it speed past them and halt dozens of feet down the line. The problem was so endemic that it inspired a workout routine labelled “the G train sprint.”
With the signs come new, standardized stopping points for conductors who used to wing it, meaning riders will have one fewer excuse for showing up late to work.
“Have you ever missed the train when you were already on the platform? I’ve had that happen on G trains a few times,” said Rhonda Tatum, who lives near the Myrtle-Willoughby stop in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “It is not fun.”
The new signs are the first evidence of the grab bag of changes the MTA promised G train riders in 2014. Others include streamlining the line’s timetable so that trains are better spaced out, adding public announcement systems to all stations, and rearranging benches and trash cans so they are closer to where the trains stop. All of those are supposed to happen by June.
