They’ve been F’ed for too long.
F train riders are demanding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority hurry up and complete repairs to a Gravesend subway staircase that are nearly a year behind schedule. The authority closed the steps on the Manhattan-bound side of the orange bullet’s Avenue X station last year but never finished work on them, forcing riders to cross over a busy intersection where Avenue X, Shell Road, McDonald Avenue, and 86th Street all meet — and the longer walk is making riders miss the train and get into work late, said Gravesender Lorraine Cohen.
“Believe me, when you get down to the corner, you can see the train is coming. It becomes a race,” she said. “You can run across if you have the light with you, but it could be a lot of traffic there. It’s a busy intersection.”
The transit authority closed the stairway last June so it could make repairs as part of its six-station, $140 million station renewal project set to wrap up next year.
Officials at the time said the steps would to reopen it by December 2015, but construction setbacks elsewhere in the station caused a domino effect that halted work on the stairway, according to spokeswoman Amanda Kwan.
“The contractor for the stair canopy portion of the project was replaced,” she said. “Repairs to the steel structure at mezzanine level delayed repairs to the stairs, then the replacement of the contractor for the canopy roof prolonged the delay.”
It’s an additional hassle for area straphangers, who already have to deal with Coney Island-bound F trains skipping the Avenue X station as part of the larger repair project, said Cohen.
“It’s compounding the problem,” she said.
And the closure is bad for business on the block too, because potential customers run right past staircase-adjacent shops in order to catch the train on the other side of the street, employees at a nearby deli said.
“People who live on this side, they don’t really come to this side because they are having a hard time getting on the train and it’s really bad for the business,” said Rafael Ajparaja of F Xpress Deli. “It’s been a long time already since the subway closed — the business went down more than half.”
The staircase will open in September, transit officials said.
“A new contractor has been selected and work will begin on the canopy roof once the materials arrive,” Kwan said.
