Brooklyn and Queens subway riders agree on one thing: They want the MTA to extend the G train deeper into the World's Borough.
As transit advocates and elected officials renew a long push to restore G train service to Forest Hills on weekends, riders told Streetsblog that they're fully on board.
“I have some friends who live in Forest Hills, so that’d be so much more accessible to get to them,” said Rachel Chef, a native New Yorker and Williamsburg resident, who also wants the G train to return to full length.
The G train ventured deep into Queens for decades, until service cuts in 2010 led to the train being terminated at Court Square, eliminating 13 stops east of the Court Square terminus. The so-called “Crosstown Local" now only stops twice in Queens.
City and state elected officials from Brooklyn and Queens urged the MTA to bring back G train service to Forest Hills — along with running a full eight-car train — in 2024. But that push fizzled.
Then, in late January, transit advocate John Surico revived the idea in a Streetsblog op-ed — and that advocacy culminated, a week later, in a letter sent by 30 groups, including Mets owner Steve Cohen and Streetsblog’s parent organization Open Plans, to Gov. Hochul, Mayor Mamdani and the MTA calling for the lengthening of the G train on weekends.
This week in Albany, Mayor Mamdani called the revival an “interesting idea” and said it’s one that his administration is “digging into right now.”
Everyday commuters say it's more than just interesting — it's vital.
“I was doing, actually, a lot of canvassing work for Zohran Mamdani’s campaign in Forest Hills,” said Hunter Boone, a video producer from Bushwick. “It was just like a huge pain to get out there all the time.”
Boone said it’d be a “no-brainer” to revive the G train’s service to Forest Hills and said it’s “kind of strange” that the train doesn’t already run to the Queens neighborhood.
Despite the 2010 service cut after the Great Recession, the G train now carries around 50,000 more riders than it did then, and its corridor has seen a surge in development.
Reviving the extension would cut down on transfer time, especially because it currently often makes more sense for Brooklyn and Queens subway riders to enter Manhattan and then bounce back across the East River rather than following a direct route. A subway ride from Prospect Park to Forest Hills Stadium takes a little over an hour, only slightly faster than a bike ride, according to Google Maps.
The G train is one of the most frequently late lines, sporting a 12-month average on-time percentage just under 82 percent in 2025, a drop of more than six points compared to 2024.
“Obviously, the G has a bad reputation,” said Will from Greenpoint, who added that the train is “always late,” “never on time” and mentioned its lack of service.
He said it would make more sense for the MTA to invest in reviving the lime line’s extension to Forest Hills rather than one of its current projects of adding new fare evasion gates at 150 subway stations, which are set to cost $1.1 billion over the next few years.
“People wouldn’t be fare evading if the services were optimal,” Will said.
