It is not the L-pocalypse, but it is an M-ergency!
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will close several Bushwick M train stations for 10 months while it rebuilds parts of the decrepit century-old railing ahead of the dreaded L-train closure, authorities announced on Friday.
The elevated track between the Myrtle Avenue-Broadway and Central Avenue stops — a stretch called the Bushwick Viaduct — is old and crumbling, the transit agency says, and it needs to patch it up before it becomes danger — and before riders flock to the line when it closes down L train tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan for years of repairs in 2018.
Starting in summer next year, the transit authority will close the Knickerbocker and Central stops for 10 months while workers replace the tracks and the parts and platform that hold them up. During the drought, it will re-route the M train along the J and Z line, and provide buses between the shuttered stops.
The agency will also stop service entirely between Myrtle Avenue and Middle Village — the furthermost Queens stop — for two months to fix up a stretch of track in the outer borough, and provide shuttle service along the track that will make stops at the Jefferson Street L train station for commuters switching lines.
Straphangers making the sensible decision to travel from Queens to the Borough of Kings will also be able to catch a shuttle bus from the Middle Village stop to the Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenue stop during the 10 months closure.
The transit agency could not say exactly when the closures will begin other than the vague “summer.”
