What the ‘L’!
MTA hit on lack of tunnel-fix info
THE L TRAIN armageddon is still a year away, but anxious riders say they’re in the dark about transit agencies’ plans for the impending chaos.
Elected officials and Brooklyn community groups rallied Tuesday outside The West coffee shop in Williamsburg to complain that it has been at least six months since reps for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and city Department of Transportation have connected with them.
“They need to collaborate with one another,” Councilman Steve Levin (D-Brooklyn) said. “We cannot get bogged down in (a) governmental blame game.”
The details of the plan to move 250,000 commuters during the 15-month shutdown of the L line’s Canarsie tunnel — for Hurricane Sandy repair work — have been too vague to give confidence to riders that they can get to their destinations or to business owners that foot traffic won’t plunge, the groups said.
The MTA is closing the L line’s Canarsie tunnel, starting in April 2019, to repair the storm’s damage. That will cut off train service in Manhattan and into Brooklyn. Brooklyn L train service will remain open up to the Bedford Ave. station.
Esther Bell, owner of The West, said it’s hard to plan for the shutdown without information.
“I can’t imagine why they think that the last-minute presenting a plan for moving these thousands of people is actually going to work,” she said.
Representatives for the MTA and DOT said officials are working together on a plan. There have been 39 community briefings since May 2016, along with meetings with businesses and property owners who will be affected by the work, according to MTA spokesman Shams Tarek.
DOT spokesman Scott Gastel said L train riders should sit tight.
“We are still in 2017 and with a year and a half before the closure takes effect, commuters want to take comfort that we are putting in the time to have the best plan possible,” Gastel said.
The most recent presentation from the MTA took place in June at a Brooklyn Community Board 1 meeting, according to the community groups. The MTA and DOT were no-shows at an August meeting with local businesses at Brooklyn Brewery.
The community groups have called for dedicated bus lanes on the Williamsburg Bridge, banning cars on the 14th St. and Grand St. corridors and the deployment of a fleet of electric buses.
“Considering how they’ve performed over the last six, seven months on the lack of communication to us, we’re more concerned now than we were before,” said Councilman Antonio Reynoso (D-Brooklyn).
Luke Ohlson, senior organizer with Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit group, said the community was told a plan would be presented in November.