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After summer of pain, G train closures persist on nights and weekends
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Oct 9, 2024
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Ramsey Khalifeh
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Oct 9, 2024
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Just when G train riders thought they were out, the MTA pulled them back in.
The MTA has in recent weeks closed segments of the Crosstown Line during nights and weekends for maintenance and upgrades — which came as a surprise to many Brooklyn and Queens commuters who thought the agency had wrapped up its work over the summer when it closed entire stretches of the line around the clock.
The overnight and weekend service disruptions are scheduled to continue into next month, according to the MTA’s service plan.
“Frequent evening closures now are affecting my life quite a bit because I have to travel to Lincoln Center for work and I’ve been working late quite a bit,” G train rider Clinton Krute said at the Court Square station on Tuesday morning. “It’s very difficult to get home.”
Krute, 43, said he’s seen MTA workers standing in front of subway staircases on several recent nights, telling disgruntled riders their section of the line was closed without any further information.
On Tuesday, however, signage at both the Court Square and Metropolitan Avenue stations indicated free shuttle buses were available at night.
MTA officials said the latest round of closures are necessary to modernize the 90-year-old signals that direct trains on the line — a job that began during the G train’s summer shutdown, which also brought new tracks and cleaner stations.
The new signal technology, called communications-based train control, or CBTC, is designed to make G train service more reliable. The new system is scheduled to go live on the line in 2027.
The MTA warned there would be further disruptions to G train service when it completed its summer shutdown of segments of the line after Labor Day. Service outages have continued to affect riders on nights and weekends since Sept. 16. And the MTA plans to close the line south of the Bedford-Nostrand station every weekend through at least the first week of November.
This week, the MTA is closing the line north of Bedford-Nostrand every night from 9:45 p.m. to 5 a.m.
MTA spokesperson Joana Flores said the summer shutdown was a part of a multiphase project. She said the shutdown helped accelerate the work, but crews still have a long way to go.
Some riders like Bill Ingolia, a retired subway train operator who worked on the G line, wondered if the signal upgrades were worth the closures.
“When the [MTA] was marketing this to the passengers … a lot of passengers thought that, ‘Oh, the new CBTC system is functioning right now,’ and it’s not.” said Ingolia, 71. “They’re a very long way from getting it implemented over here.”
It's unclear if weekend and overnight maintenance work will persist until 2027, when the MTA expects to complete the signal upgrades.
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new york city
queens
transportation
brooklyn
Ramsey Khalifeh
Ramsey Khalifeh is a transportation reporter on the NYC Accountability desk covering the largest transit system in the country. He was previously a general assignment reporter at Gothamist and worked on the Boston Globe's metro and copy desk. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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