City Council Members Demand MTA Provide L Train Shutdown Plans

BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN — City officials and activists who are frustrated with transit officials for not sharing their L train shutdown plans will gather in City Hall for an oversight hearing on Thursday.

City Council representatives and transportation advocates will call on the Metropolitan Transit Authority and Mayor Bill de Blasio to provide a detailed and environmentally-friendly plan for dealing with the 15-month shutdown of the Canarsie Tunnel slated to begin in 2019.

"The burden is on the MTA and the City to produce an ambitious, credible plan,” said Rebecca Bailin, Campaign Manager for the Riders Alliance. “Hundreds of thousands of L train riders are looking to Mayor de Blasio and MTA Chair Joe Lhota to provide a plan that helps people get to work."

The group are among a growing number of New Yorkers who fear the MTA and DOT plans isn’t going to provide essential services and fixes, such as adequate transportation alternatives to the L trains’ 400,000 daily riders when the train stops providing service between Manhattan and Brooklyn in 2019.

The MTA has yet to specify whether it will take recommendations that include increasing service on the A and C lines, improving rapid bus services in Brooklyn and Manhattan and creating a dedicated busway on the Williamsburg Bridge, according to a recent report from Regional Plan Association, an urban research organization that focuses on east coast transportation.

The MTA has provided some details, which include additional service on G, J and M lines, new ferry service between North Sixth Street in Brooklyn and East 20th Street in Manhattan, and high capacity bike parking stations, according to the report.

The report also expressed concern that crucial accessibility updates — such as adding elevators to the Third and Sixth Avenue stations and escalators at Union Square — would not be included in the 2019 plan.

“Advocates have said it’s ‘unconscionable’ to close subway lines and not make station accessibility improvements,” the report reads.

“If not done now, improvements like elevators at 3rd and 6th Avenues will not come to the L train for decades, possibly never.”

Officials also worry that the MTA will not consider green transportation options after the MTA recently spent $150 million on 180 diesel buses and did not choose a more eco-friendly option, noting that the city's transportation sector accounted for 21 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions in 2016.

"While the road to President Trump's White House may be paved with coal," Councilman Rafael Espinal said at the time, “we want the road to Brooklyn to be green.”

Which is why the Espinal, Reynoso and Ydanis Rodriguez, the city councilman who chairs of the Committee of Transportation, have invited members of the public and transportation officials to the oversight hearing on Thursday.

According to a representative from Councilman Rodriquez' office, Yennifer Martinez, neither the MTA nor the DOT has confirmed they will send representatives to the hearing.

"We are still waiting for them because we don't know anything," said Martinez. "It is there responsibility to be there."

The meeting, which is open to the public, is slated for 10 a.m. on Dec. 14 in City Council chambers.

Photo by Patch reporter John V. Santore