Times profiles F Express plan

Keeping momentum. That’s always the key to a successful public awareness campaign, and right now, that’s what Gary Reilly and the rest of us pushing for F express service are trying to do.

After delivering the petition to the MTA and receiving a favorable response from the Authority’s board, Reilly has tirelessly worked to keep this plan in the news. We have to keep applying pressure to the MTA to see this wish become a reality. This week, Reilly’s efforts ended up in a neighborhood spotlight on Carroll Gardens in The City section of the Sunday Times. Jake Mooney profiled Reilly:

Mr. Reilly said his petition comes at the perfect time, with the population of several neighborhoods swelling along the F line and the city seeking improvements in mass transit to accompany the mayor’s “congestion pricing” proposal to reduce traffic. The unused tracks, Mr. Reilly said, represent an untapped resource. “It would cost billions of dollars to build those express tracks today,” he said, “and they’re sitting there doing nothing.”

But there are good reasons for that inactivity, said Deirdre Parker, a spokeswoman for the transportation authority. Restoration of F service is being held up for at least four years by work to repair facilities near the Bergen Street subway station that were damaged in a 1999 fire, and by work on the Culver Viaduct, the railroad bridge over the Gowanus Canal.

Mr. de Blasio, however, would like to see the authority restore express service while those projects are going on, or at least set a clear timeline for restoration. “Is there no other way but to wait for everything to be done?” he said. “If it was more of a priority, could they find a way to work around it?”

Therein lies the part we must stress. As Gary has repeatedly pointed out, those express would cost billions of dollars to build, and yet they sit empty and unused. The MTA has, at its disposal, express tracks it could use to ferry thousands of straphangers to and from Brooklyn. But they remain empty.

While I understand the argument about the fire and the Culver Viaduct work, I have seen F trains run express this spring as crews work on the local tracks. There doesn’t seem to be much wrong with the signals at Bergen St.

The petition now has nearly 3000 signatures. If you haven’t signed on to it yet, do so now. And let’s keep pressuring the MTA to bring this plan to fruition. We want express and local service along the Culver Line in Brooklyn. It’s time.