No L Train Shutdown Might Mean Worse Commutes Longterm: Experts

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — Gov. Andrew Cuomo's surprise announcement earlier this year that the L train wouldn't need to shut down for 15 months was met with mixed reactions, but for most commuters who rely on the subway line, it likely was a sigh of relief.

Instead of finding alternate transportation for a full 15 months as originally planned, commuters would only need to find a new way to get around during nighttime and weekend closures.

But, according to experts at an event in Williamsburg this week, the new plan might actually do more harm than good for commuters fed up with the city's beleaguered transportation system.

Most panelists contended that not shutting down the L train might actually be a missed opportunity for the city's transit options, since it will likely also mean scrapping a host of additional buses, bike lanes and other measures meant to mitigate the impact of the shutdown.

"There was a lot of work that was going to be done that potentially could have stayed around after and improved (the system) overall," community organizer Benjamin Solotaire said. "With the alternate transportation plan, they’re not reaching for the stars here…They may expand the system, but they’re not going to benefit us in the long term."

Solotaire, who is also the director of participatory budgeting for Council Member Stephen Levin, was one of five speakers that discussed the new plan's impact on commuters and sustainability during a forum hosted by URBAN-X, an urbantech startup accelerator, on Wednesday.

He was joined by Rodrigo Bautista, a sustainability advocate from Forum for the Future, local real estate investor Toby Moskovits, LimeBike executive Phil Jones and Kate Slevin, a senior vice president with the Regional Plan Association.

Slevin said that shutting down the L train for a full 15 months could have tested out a strategy for fixing the city's subways that her association recommended in its latest regional plan for the area. The subways are in such bad shape that large swings, like closing all subway lines at night, are needed to fix them longterm, she said.

"We saw it as a way to test out this idea that if you close a line down for a long period of time you can get a lot of the improvements, that would otherwise be done over a decade, done in a year," she said.

This strategy, though, requires major improvements to transportation above ground, Slevin said, which it seems the new plan for the L train won't take on.

A car-free busway on 14th Street in Manhattan, carpool and bus-only lanes on the Williamsburg Bridge and other features of the original shutdown plan that are now likely abandoned would have helped mobility in the city regardless of the L train plans, Slevin said.

Bautista added that more long-term thinking is also needed in terms of improving sustainability. "Micro-mobility" options such as bicycles would reduce congestion and carbon emissions, he said.

"It’s like, 'I need a liver transplant and I’m going to take an aspirin'" he said. "If we don’t start to think and act differently things are going to stay the way we have them."

A survey of residents completed for the forum found that most respondents, 39 percent, planned to substitute the L train closures with more trains, but that 19 percent planned to use buses and 14 percent would use bicycles or other "micro-mobility" options instead.

The new plan also left a lot to be desired in terms of how it was handled by the city, the panelists said. Two-thirds of the survey respondents rated the city's management of the plans as "mostly terrible."

The new proposal was announced last month, three years into the city's planning for the original shutdown.

"The whole situation with the L train is in some ways government at its worst...a decision being made with no public input," Solotaire said.

He pointed out that in the years the city spent planning for the initial shutdown plans, community members had largely said they preferred a one-time full shutdown over periodic closures of the subway line. Officials need to start reaching out to communities more so than they have done since the new plan was announced, he said.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.