NEARLY PAIN-L-ESS
14th St. buses off to slow start, wait clocks glitchy, but retool’s mostly OK
The first weekend of reduced L train service came with some hiccups, confusion and a whole lot of adjusting by straphangers.
Weekend L trains began running every 20 minutes between Manhattan and Brooklyn and every 10 minutes within Brooklyn starting Friday evening — the same reduced schedule will also be in place on weeknights starting at 8 p.m. for the duration of construction on the line, which is scheduled to last around 15 months.
While many riders switched to other lines to get to their destinations, some just buckled down and dealt with the longer L wait times.
The longest of those wait times was at the 14th St.Union Square station, where Brooklyn-bound trains laid over for about five minutes while passengers boarded and Eighth Ave.-bound trains cleared the station. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority cordoned off parts of the station’s mezzanine and stairs to keep the platform from becoming dangerously crowded.
“We might as well have fun if we’re gonna be sitting here,” said one rider Saturday night while waiting at Union Square on a Brooklyn-bound L train.
She blasted pop music from a speaker, sipped on a “nutcracker” juice drink and danced with her friends. “I’ve got 10 stops to go — I’ll get there when I get there.”
NYC Transit President Andy Byford said platform crowding wasn’t an issue, and commended his staff for maintaining 20-minute intervals on trains in the East River tunnels with very few exceptions. He admitted that countdown clocks at some L train stations “erroneously” showed 40-minute wait times.
“As with any plan, you finetune it as you go along,” said Byford. “I think New Yorkers have been great. They’ve been patient and good-humored.”
Riders had less patience aboveground on 14th St., where bunched buses and heavy traffic slowed service Sunday on the M14A and M14D bus routes.
Byford noted buses on 14th St. should speed up once the city begins enforcing its new busway this summer, which will only permit buses, trucks and local cars to drive along the street between Third and Ninth Aves.
He also pointed to plans for M14 Select Bus Service, which the MTA hopes will speed up service by implementing features like all-door boarding.
“The city and MTA need to get the 14th St. busway up and running as quickly as possible to ease unacceptably slow crosstown traffic,” said Riders Alliance spokesman Danny Pearlstein. “For riders to stick with transit for the long haul of the slowdown, we need to make maximally efficient use of our streets and bridges.”
On the Brooklyn side of the L slowdown, the MTA launched two free shuttle bus routes, the B91 and the B92, which carry riders from the Bedford Ave. and Lorimer St. L stations to the J and M lines.
Sources pointed to some slight hiccups on those shuttles, including issues with the new fully electric buses they are using to supplement the free routes.
Moises Del Rio, the vice chairman of the Grand Ave. bus depot for Transport Workers Union Local 100, said drivers had to take two electric buses back to the depot to be charged Saturday night because the single on-street charger at Williamsburg Plaza wasn’t able to handle the capacity.
“That’s going to be a dilemma in the future where the buses have to be taken out of service to get charged,” said Del Rio.
Del Rio added that the shuttle buses were having some problems making left turns onto Metropolitan Ave. from Havermeyer St. on Saturday because the city’s traffic enforcement officer didn’t show up for work.
Full service on the line is to be restored for Monday’s morning rush — though the MTA is still figuring out issues with work trains clearing the tracks within the proper time.
Monday’s commute “will be the acid test,” said Byford. “We’re focused on making the Monday and nightly handovers during the week go very smoothly.”
Officials do not expect dust from this weekend’s construction to be a problem as it was last month, when the MTA was completing a major station renovation at Bedford Ave. that left trace levels of potentially harmful silica dust in the air at least once.