Newcomers to trendy neighborhood find clogged underground
by Philip Caulfield and Sandra Larriva Henaine
The crowd gathered on the platform of the Bedford Avenue L station in Williamsburg was five people deep. It was 8:24 a.m. on a recent Thursday, and riders rushed down the station’s main entrance, coffee cups in hand, the disappointment showing on their faces when they reached the platform and saw the awaiting swell.
When the train pulled out, at least two dozen commuters were left standing on the platform.
“It gets really bad,” said Ashley Salomon-Wander, 28, who rides the L every morning into Manhattan. “Sometimes you have to wait for three or four trains before you can get on.”
In the last decade, Williamsburg has experienced a population boom based on the neighborhood’s cheaper rents and trendy appeal. During that time, the L has become the second most crowded line in the city during rush hour, according to the Straphangers Campaign, a transit system watchdog group.
The Bedford Avenue stop is the last of 19 stops in Brooklyn before the train enters Manhattan
“Transit officials have underestimated the growth in Williamsburg and Greenpoint,” said Gene Russianoff, the Straphangers Campaign’s staff attorney. “I think it was predictable that the rezoning would increase ridership, and [New York City Transit] is not prepared.”
Crowding is not the only problem. While L line stations such as Eighth Avenue and Union Square in Manhattan underwent extensive renovations in 1999, the Bedford Avenue station is soiled with decade’s worth of grit and could use a fresh scouring.
“The MTA’s budget has been starved by the city and state,” said Teresa Toro, chair of the transit committee for Brooklyn’s Community Board 1, which includes Williamsburg and nearby Greenpoint. “There’s a capital budget for buying subway cars and there is a maintenance budget for keeping the subways clean, and we haven’t been able to rely on the MTA for either of those things.”
Generally, a subway train can hold from 1,500 to 2,000 people depending on the number and size of the subway cars, said Charles Seaton, a spokesman for New York City Transit, which operates the subways. “You can’t exceed the capacity,” said Seaton. “Once a car is full, it’s full.”
In a subway report card released by the Straphangers Campaign in July, the L ranked 21 out of 22 in an assessment gauging the chance a rider might find a seat during rush hour. (Only the W line, which runs between Austoria, Queens and Lower Manhattan, was worse.)
Seaton said New York City Transit is addressing the issue by adding trains and tweaking the L’s communication-based train control system, or CBTC, which uses radio frequencies to monitor the trains’ positioning in real time and allows trains to run closer together.
An L train arrives at the Bedford Avenue station once every four minutes, which bests the subway system’s citywide average by more than a minute, according to the Straphangers Campaign. The L is also the only line in the city using CBTC, which increases safety and issues automated alerts about when the next train is due to arrive, said Seaton.
Because of the real-time monitoring system, L trains can also travel more closely to one another than the rest of the city’s trains, which use the standard fixed-block system that prevents two trains from entering a predetermined section of track at the same time.
The problem is that NYC Transit doesn’t have enough cars capable of functioning with the CBTC system, said William Henderson, executive director of New York City Transit Rider’s Council, a state-mandated oversight agency.
The L uses newer-generation R143 cars, which cost more than $1 million per car.
“There’s a substantial lead time,” said Henderson. “You got to have the financing set up in your capital programs to be able to purchase the equipment, and right now they don’t have the equipment.”
For now, Bedford Avenue riders have to get crafty. Some riders enter the station from Driggs and North Seventh Street and wait in the less-crowded area behind the entrance’s stairwell to avoid the crush at the train’s middle cars. Others purposely wait out a first train and then stand at the exact spot where the train’s doors stopped in order to be the first aboard the next train.
“I’ve also seen people put stickers down to mark a certain spot where the doors stop,” said Kristina Donaldson, 22, an actress who was forced to wait for two trains to pass before finally boarding a third.
James Anyansi, a New York City Transit spokesman, said that the MTA board is meeting in October to discuss how to increase service and that the L trains should begin arriving at Bedford Avenue more frequently starting in December.
That may not be early enough, as some Williamsburg residents chafe at the sight of high-rise condo skeletons sprouting up across their neighborhood while the subway situation remains unaddressed.
“They need to stop putting up apartment buildings and bring in more trains,” said Salomon-Wander. |
