Blogger Launches Petititon to Revive Dormant Subway Tracks

3:33 PM EDT on June 22, 2007

With the city promising to improve mass transit via congestion pricing revenue, Gary Reilly, author of neighborhood blog, First and Court has started a petition asking the MTA to restore express subway service on the F line and to extend the V line for local service to Brooklyn:

The petition, which you can sign here, already has over 2,200 signatures on it. Reilly writes:

Increases in the commuting population in Brooklyn have taxed the transit infrastructure, and the plan for congestion pricing in Manhattan will further add to the stresses on subway commuters. Enhancing transit service in the outer boroughs is vital to the quality of life in our rapidly growing communities and to the feasibility of any congestion pricing plan.
Currently, along the F line in Brooklyn, a set of express tracks lie unused while the local service gets more and more crowded. In addition, the V line currently stops at 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, resulting in near-empty V trains through Manhattan, while F trains are packed.

A New York City Transit spokesman tells the Brooklyn Paper that it won't be possible to activate the F line's unused express tracks until 2012 due to construction work on two Brooklyn stations. Some history:

An express F ran between Jay Street-Borough Hall and Kings Highwayduring rush hours through the 1970s, when it was discontinued for trackrepair work. The dormant express tracks run below the local trackbetween Bergen and Carroll streets and beside the local tracks on theelevated portion to Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. South of the Slope,the track follows a separate tunnel to the Church Street station.
Transitexperts have said in the past that an F express could stop at YorkStreet station in DUMBO, Jay Street, Seventh Avenue and Church Avenue,before running local to Coney Island.

Photo: Tom Callan for Brooklyn Paper

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

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