The wait isn’t over, but it is shorter.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has followed through on its promise to make it easier to get around Brooklyn by reducing the time between G trains from 10 minutes to eight, starting today. The new, high-frequency Brooklyn Local will be in effect from 3 pm to 9 pm, according to the transit agency. Long-suffering straphangers praised the service improvement.
“Anything that lessens the wait is a good thing,” said Jamila Glass, waiting for a Church-Avenue-bound train at Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint.
The boost is part of a bevy of improvements to the train that has the distinction of being the only line that does not travel to Manhattan. The others include adding signs, trash cans, and benches to G stations, adding public address systems to 12 stops, and standardizing where the stubby subway comes to a halt, to spare straphangers the dreaded G train sprint.
The transit agency’s moves to make the Ghost Train more visible follow the prescriptions of a list of suggested improvements drawn up by straphanger advocates. But the authority has so far ignored calls to Free the G by long-suffering G riders who say it is a no-brainer to allow for a free above-ground transfer between the Broadway stop and the Lorimer J and M station, as well as the Fulton G stop and Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center. The Lorimer–Broadway connection will be temporarily in place from July 26–Sept. 1, but a transit rep says there has been no further consideration of making the measure permanent.
Also this week, the trasportation agency will begin running the nighttime and weekend M train shuttle across the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan, five stops beyond the Myrtle–Broadway station where riders have long had to transfer across the platform between the stopped-short shuttle and the J and Z lines.
A weekend warrior who spends time across the East River for reasons unknown said the upgrade is a boon.“Only having to take one train into Manhattan on the weekends is so much easier,” said Ariel Gibson, who lives at the Knickerbocker Avenue stop in Bushwick.
