Planned improvements to the Atlantic Avenue subway station will bring arena visitors to the Barclays Center stoop. (Click to enlarge)

Although I haven’t written much about it over the past few years, I have a personal interest in the Barclays Center/Atlantic Yards project. I can walk to the new arean in around 10-15 minutes from my apartment, and the project’s potential impact looms large over my current corner of New York City. From the subway crowds evening events will bring to the folks trawling the neighborhood looking for that elusive free parking spot, this project has the ability to disrupt life in Brownstone Brooklyn if it’s not handled correctly.

Last night, the major stakeholders in the project gathered in Brooklyn to discuss the infrastructure impact the project will have. Led by Sam Schwartz, the traffic and transportation consultant for the project, Forest City Ratner officials and local politicians led a meeting and discussion on transportation demand. While transit use remains the focus for arena-bound patrons, it’s unclear if the plan goes far enough to avoid an influx of congestion in the area, and a call for a residential parking permit program has stalled in Albany.

The simple truth about the Barclays Center arena is that it is not a car-friendly spot. Unlike Yankee Stadium or Citi Field, the Meadowlands, the abomination in Nassau County or even MSG, the Nets’ future home isn’t neighboring a highway (or, in the case of MGS, the Lincoln Tunnel). The BQE is a distance away down an oft-congested Flatbush Ave., and the nearest river crossings feed from local streets. Instead, it is atop one of the system’s great subway and LIRR focal points with the IND Crosstown and Fulton St. lines nearby. Transit use should be encouraged.

During last night’s presentation, that’s exactly how the project engineers framed it. For starters, the Barclays Center on its website and promotional materials will not discuss parking. It instead urges everyone to take transit, and people are responding. According to Schwartz’s presentation, mode share is now expected to be weighted toward transit trips with 40 percent of attendees across all events opting for the subway. But around 30 percent are still expected to drive — at least at first and until they see how inconvenient it will be to drive there.

To compensate for post-game crowds, the MTA will add extra Q and 4 trains into Manhattan. The authority runs a similar service along the 7 for Mets games and D and 4 for Yankee games. Extra buses will service the area, and the LIRR will add post-event trains as well. Pre-game peak hour crowds heading to the arena will cause crowding, but with a great number of lines passing through the area, the MTA seems to expect a diffuse impact.

What to do with the cars though remains an issue. Schwartz said the number of spaces near the arena has been chopped from 1100 to 541, and those who will drive are being encouraged to park in remote lots. Free shuttle buses will ferry patrons from those lots to the arena as unloading areas around the arena on Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues will be extremely limited. Still, though, parking rates will not be raised to discourage driving, and more importantly, a residential parking plan has stalled in Albany.

The latter point, as Council Member Letitia James noted, is a problem. Even if the bill were to move forward tomorrow, it would likely be another year — and a full basketball season — until the parking passes become a reality, and residents will have to contend with game-bound drivers seeking out a free space. Even with a public outreach effort discouraging drivers, enough temporary arena visitors will cruise Prospect Heights, Park Slope and Fort Greene to cause problems. “I just don’t think there’s enough disincentives,” James said. “I believe cars will flood our residential streets.”

Finally, pedestrian safety is a problem too. While the new subway entrances will siphon arena patrons to the building’s front plaza, crossing Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in that area isn’t fun on a good day. The city hasn’t been willing to institute many traffic-calming measures around the arena during construction, and there are none on the table for after. It remains, according to Schwartz, a work in progress that will be reassessed periodically.

So I am left wondering how flexible these plans will be. We do not know who will foot the bill for added post-event transit service, and a plan floated in 2009 that would have provided free MetroCards to Barclays Center guests has died a death due to unknown causes. Has Forest City Ratner done enough to discourage parking? Will the conditions on the street disincentivize driving after a few weeks? The Barclays Center arena is one of the most accessible around, and it’s in a neighborhood will little room for additional parking. Transit will be a part of the equation, and how patrons embrace that element will impact how residents come to view the return of professional sports to Brooklyn.

For more detailed coverage of the meeting, check out the Park Slope Patch liveblog and Norman Oder’s comprehensive coverage on Atlantic Yards Report.

An astute straphanger noticed some new signage at Atlantic Avenue this week. (Photo by flickr user OverclockedBravo)

It sure does seem like ages ago that the MTA announced its first — and, so far, only — subway station naming rights deal, but after three years, the Barclays Center is coming to the subway system. As we learned back in June of 2009, the MTA is earning $200,000 annually for 20 years for the right to append the name of the new arena to the subway station name, and the new moniker is now showing up on maps and at the station.

Pacific Street, we hardly knew ye.

As the photo above shows, the Barclays Center name is slowly taking over some column posts even though the arena won’t open for another four months or so. Meanwhile, it has made its first appearance on the online subway map but not the PDF available for download. According to one report, maps and system signage will not bear the new name until later this summer.

With this glimpse at the subway naming future, we see that, apparently, the MTA will be dropping the Pacific St. half of the station name entirely. In a way, that’s no big loss as Pacific St. was a relic of the old BMT system. As Pacific St. is a tiny one-way street with nothing much of note on it, passengers bound for that station are more interested in the fact that the stop lies at the intersections of Flatbush, 4th and Atlantic Aves. Only some of the entrances were on Pacific St., and the Atlantic Ave./Barclays Center name better captures why subway riders are heading there in the first place.

This shiny future for 370 Jay Street is one step closer to reality. (Rendering via NYU and The Real Deal)

The MTA’s headquarters at 370 Jay Street will be a blight no more upon Downtown Brooklyn. After a decade of wrangling, political proclamations and unfunded plans to renovate the building, the MTA has agreed to surrender its lease on the building to the city, and in return, the city will provide NYU with the opportunity to turn the building into an applied sciences center in the heart of a rapidly growing neighborhood.

“Over the next five years, 370 Jay Street will be transformed into a cutting-edge center for research and science that will give another huge boost to our city’s economy,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday. “Our Administration has long seen the promise of Downtown Brooklyn, and we’ve made the investments needed to transform it into a thriving center for business. With the addition of this new campus, Brooklyn will be one of the most dynamic environments for entrepreneurs anywhere in the country.”

According to the Mayor’s Office, NYU will pay the MTA $50 million relocation expenses. The NYPD, another tenant, will receive $10 million. The university will then pay $1 per year in rent while receiving a series of tax breaks as well. That’s quite the deal for the city.

For the MTA, though, this announcements ends a long-term stalemate over 370 Jay St. The authority had been renting the building from the city, also for $1 a year, but the MTA estimated that renovations on the property would have cost a few hundred million dollars. They didn’t have the money to conduct such work, and even as the Jay St. subway station underneath the building underwent a comprehensive rehab, the building aboveground sat wrapped in a permanent scaffolding. Politicians hated it, and the building seemingly arose as a symbol of MTA inefficiency.

When NYU first announced its plans to open a science center in Brooklyn, the university originally offered the MTA $20 million to vacate its premises. The authority, no longer willing to roll over and die as it did with the Atlantic Yards air rights, dug in and asked for $50 million. With prodding from the Mayor, NYU gave in, and the MTA will begin to move out later this year. “For many years, 370 Jay Street served as the headquarters of the NYC Transit Authority,” MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said. “Everyone at the MTA is proud that the building will be repurposed as New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress – a new business and science incubator in downtown Brooklyn.”

Of course, there’s a bit of a wrinkle. The NYU has six months to conduct due diligence on 370 Jay St. It will assess how much the renovations to the building will cost and whether or not they can be completed in time for usage in September 2017. If the due diligence finds that the building work will cost more, they can back out of this deal, and we’ll be back at square one. Considering how badly NYU wants this space, though, something would have go to horribly wrong for this deal to fall through. With the MTA though, anything is possible.

Will the G train extension remain once the Culver Viaduct rehab is completed?

A few weeks ago, when the MTA opened up the northern staircase at 4th Ave. and 9th St., a few Brooklynites grew concerned over the state of the Culver Viaduct rehab. With over a year still left on the work — and the reopening of Smith/9th Sts. delayed until the fall — these folks grew concerned that the MTA would take away the very useful five-stop G train extension that’s been in place since 2009. Keep it, they rightfully argued.

Now, I know the value of this extension quite well. I live a short walk away from the 7th Ave. stop at 9th St. in Brooklyn, and ever since the G train has been extended through my station, trips to Williamsburg, Greenpoint and beyond have been much, much quicker. I don’t have to wait interminably for an F train only to have to wait interminably a few stops later for a G train. A one-seat ride, especially late at night, makes all the difference, and the crowded G train as it snakes through Brownstone Brooklyn is a testament to the success of this extension.

That the viaduct work won’t wrap until 2013 and that the G train extension has been successful, though, will not stop New Yorkers for getting all up in a tizzy. Since it appeared as though the end of the work was at least in sight if not actually around the corner, local leaders found a transit issue they could exploit. That, at least, is my pessimistic take on the issue.

The Straphangers along with Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz joined together to form the 5 Stop Fan Club, an advocacy group with a mission to convince the MTA to keep the G train extension alive. They started a petition drive, garnered front-page coverage in New York’s free dailies and earned a few brief TV and public radio spots. It’s a pro-transit campaign getting mainstream press coverage!

The comments came fast and furious. “Ending this service will have a profound effect on the community and the mom and pop stores along these five stops,” de Blasio said. “I encourage every New Yorker who wants to see the G train service preserved to join the 5 Stop Fan Club and let your voices be heard.” A Carroll Gardens resident echoed this concern. “The extension is a minor inconvenience for them to keep open, but it’s a major convenience for the public, especially on the weekends when service is slower,” George Luis Cordero said to The Daily News.

Something about this petition drive rubbed me the wrong way though. When I expressed my doubts via Twitter, Cate Contino of the Straphangers parried with me. I think the politicians signed on are just looking to garner constituent favor and that the G train extension will be saved if lower-case-s straphangers actually use it. The Straphangers, rightfully so, seek to raise awareness of a useful subway extension that will cost the MTA the operating budget equivalent of 3-4 extra train sets.

Yet, the MTA never said ti would axe the G train extension. At the start of the Culver rehab, the authority said the extension would be temporary with an evaluation to be conducted at the end of the work. That’s the line they’re still pushing today. As I’ve said, if the ridership warrants it, the G train extension to Church Ave. will become permanent, and so far, ridership appears to warrant it.

So here’s my proposal: Sign the petition; raise awareness about it. But in the end, as the folks petition over the M8 back in 2010 showed, if the ridership isn’t there, no amount of petitioning can save a doomed transit route once the MTA puts it under the cutting knife. So ride, ride, ride, and the G train won’t be going anywhere.

Will the G train extension remain once the Culver Viaduct rehab is completed?

As the Culver Viaduct rehabilitation project inches forward, residents in Brownstone Brooklyn are only half-hearted embracing the good news. Everyone wants service restored at Smith/9th Sts., but no one wants to lose the G train extension to Church Ave., a benefit of the project. With the rehab set to wrap until next winter, the G extension may be up in the air.

The G train extension has long been billed as a temporary benefit to the Culver Viaduct work. It was, in fact, one of the first news items to warrant a post on this site back in 2006, and the MTA instituted the new service pattern in May of 2009. At the time, the authority said it was a temporary extension that could become permanent if it gained enough popularity. It should stay.

By extending the G train to Church Ave., the MTA has connected some popular destinations throughout Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Clinton Hill, Williamsburg and Greenpoint with Park Slope, Kensington and beyond. It improves intra-borough, intra-neighborhood travel, something that the New York City subway does not always do well. Now, as the Viaduct project reaches milestones on the road toward completion, Brooklyn residents, as The Brooklyn Paper recently reported, want to see the extension become permanent. Natalie O’Neill had more:

MTA Spokesman Charles Seaton told The Brooklyn Paper that “a decision hasn’t been made” about whether the agency would keep the G train running at those five stations come next fall, declining to comment further until reviewing a feasibility report. The agency initially said it would make the G train extension permanent, but later backtracked amid budgetary woes.

…Many straphangers said the addition of the staircase is no consolation if the MTA plans to eliminate the G train extension. “It’s a pain,” said Matt Flammer, a Fort Greene resident who commutes to Park Slope. “It means you have to wake up half an hour earlier. And that makes you that much more grumpy in the morning.”

Thankfully for commuters along the G line, transit insiders say there’s still hope for the train. Gene Russianoff, a spokesman for the transportation advocacy group the Straphangers Campaign, said the city will likely consider how much use the G train gets at those five stations before deciding whether to make the temporary service permanent. “I can tell you from private meetings with [city officials], they’ve been impressed by the amount of ridership at those locations,” Russianoff said. “I’d like to see it continue.”

It’s often hyperbole to say that literally no one opposes anything, but it’s awfully tough to find some with a legitimate gripe against added G train service. Selfishly, I love it as it allows me a quick ride from my home neighborhood up to the bars and restaurants in Williamsburg and my friends along the G train’s route. The MTA should be in the business of providing adequate train service, and maintaining this G extension should become a priority as the Culver Countdown reaches completion.

Once upon a time, neighborhood activists called for a G connection with Atlantic Ave., and at other times, civic groups have rallied to save service on this oft-crowded and sometimes-neglected IND line. This one is a no-brainer though. Even when the viaduct rehab is over, the G should remain a Church Ave.-bound train.

In an effort to enliven a dead spot on the avenue, the east subway entrance at 4th Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets in Brooklyn, seen here last year, have been reopened. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

As part of the extensive Culver Viaduct rehabilitation project, the MTA has reopened a subway entrance that had been closed for more than four decades. Transit announced today that the long-shuttered entrance underneath the viaduct on the east side of 4th Ave. between 9th and 10th Streets has been reopened, pleasing neighbors who had viewed the conditions under the viaduct as unsafe blight. Pedestrian advocates too are happy with the reopening as straphangers will now no longer have to cross a busy and dangerous 4th Ave.

“During the initial phases of this project, we decided it was the perfect opportunity to reopen the east side station house on 4th Avenue,” NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said in a statement. “We are grateful to the elected officials whose contributions allowed us to do even more than we had planned at this historic station.”

The project, as I reported last year, was funded through an $800,000 grant from Assembly Representative Joan Millman’s office and $2 million from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz as well. Both politicians praised the authority for its work. “The opening of the east side entrance to the 4th Avenue-9th Street station is a big win for the community and the first stage of what will be the eventual transformation of Fourth Avenue into a grand ‘Brooklyn Boulevard,’” Markowitz said. “Soon, the area adjacent to this entrance will be filled with retail, and the exterior archways and windows will be opened and restored to their original glory.”

Despite today’s reopening, Transit says it still has to put the finishing touches on the revived entrance and has a ways to go as it completes the station renovation. The doors that open onto 4th Ave. are temporary, and those that open onto 10th St. will remain closed until later this year. The historic arch, covered by billboards on both sides, will be unveiled by the end of the year as well as Transit works to give the station a “lighter, more open look.”

Other improvements to the 4th Ave. area include a fresh coat of paint for the underside of the viaduct, improved lighting above the sidewalks and new retail storefronts for the both the east and west side of the streets. Transit plans to award contracts for those stores in 2013. All told, it’s a welcome improvement to what is an ugly but well-trod block along 4th Ave.

It’s been a busy week for me, and I find myself without much strength to write a full post tonight. So let’s dig into the Second Ave. Sagas Wayback Machine and visit a post on a once-planned and still-needed subway extension deep in the heart of Brooklyn…

The proposed Second System subway expansion plans issued in 1929 called for subway lines down Nostrand and Utica Aves.

In the annals of New York City subway history, the Second Ave. Subway carries with it the grand stigma of futility. First proposed in 1920, the SAS went through various iterations, groundbreakings and funding crises before the current construction efforts relaunched in 1995. Barring an economic catastrophe, at least Phase 1 of the Second Ave. line will open before the end of the decade, and the Second Ave. Subway will pass from myth to reality.

Elsewhere, though, other subway expansion plans have languished for nearly as long as the Second Ave. Subway. While none of these plans have as tortured a history as the future T line does, many of them are common-sense system expansions that have been on and off the city’s transit table since the early days of New York’s subway system. Take, for instance, the Marine Park-Sheepshead Bay-Gerritsen Beach area.

Although Brooklyn’s subway service is nearly as comprehensive as Manhattan’s, a glance at the borough map reveals a large gap in service in the southern reaches of eastern Brooklyn. The Marine Park-Sheepshead Bay-Gerritsen Beach triangle is serviced only by the B and Q along Flatbush Ave. to the west and a bunch of local buses. To the north, the Flatbush Ave./Brooklyn College stop serves as a terminal for the 2 and 5 trains, and with Nostrand Ave. running south from that station, that road would serve as the natural starting point for new service.

In fact, that’s long been the dream of city planners, and that final stop on the 2 and 5 wasn’t built as such. Rather, it was supposed to lead into the Nostrand Ave. subway line. Talk of the Nostrand and Utica Ave. subway extensions pop up as early as 1910 when The Times discusses future expansion of the young system into Brooklyn. A century ago, planners anticipated a branch of the subway running out to the ocean, and the IRT awarded its Brooklyn expansion plans in two contracts. Only the first part saw the light of day, and when Flatbush Ave./Brooklyn College opened in 1920, no one knew this station would become the de facto terminal for the IRT.

In 1929, when the city unveiled its ambitious Second System proposal, both Nostrand and Utica Ave. extensions were included. The Nostrand spur would have completed the IRT’s early 1910 plans for subway expansion, and the Utica Ave. route would have been the southern part of the new Williamsburg train lines. A 1939 post-Depression version of the Second System had the Utica Ave. line reaching Floyd Bennett Field.

The 1939 plans for subway service to Floyd Bennett Field.

As we know from the history of the Second Ave. subway, though, a World War interrupted the city’s ambitious expansion plans, and the Nostrand and Utica subway lines were once again shelved for nearly 15 years. As the mid-1950s dawned and the city looked to build the Second Ave. line, so too did it give approval for the Nostrand and Utica Avenue extension plans. The Nostrand spur would again see what we now call the 2 and 5 extended south while the Utica Avenue plans were scaled back. Instead of a new line coming south from Williamsburg, the 1950s plan called for a spur from what is today the end of the 4 line in Brooklyn. The extensions were estimated to cost $82.15 million — or around $656 million in today’s money — and be ready for service by 1960.

A proposed rendering from 1969 of the Utica and Nostrand Avenue subway expansion plans.

But the city’s debt and deferred system maintenance led to a different reality. By 1957, it was clear that the two subway lines in Brooklyn would not see the light of day, and as transportation money went to modernization instead of growth, the plans laid dormant for another ten years. In 1968, the city again approved a massive subway expansion plan that included the Nostrand and Utica Avenue lines, and again, the city’s financial situation would intervene. Over the next three years, the bond request that would fund these expansion plans became a hot political issue. The city and state had no money, and many transit watchers did not believe the price tags for the capital plans were accurate. With Theodore Kheel, a current advocate for free transit, banging the financial drum, voters turned down the transportation bond request, and although another bill would pass a few years later, the Nostrand and Utica Avenue subways died in 1971.

On March 21, 1971, The Times penned a requiem for these plans. City planners thought the Utica Ave. routing would lead to even more overcrowding on the already-stuffed IRT lines and wanted to extend the Canarsie BMT — today’s L train — instead. The price tags for the two projects had reached $350 million in 1971 or $1.8 billion today, and no one believed that estimate to be accurate. These concerns still ring true today, and when Kheel attained his victory in the early 1970s, the Nostrand and Utica Ave. plans would become but another unbuilt relic of the subway system.

Today, the areas that would have enjoyed subway system 80 or 90 years ago are among the more isolated and car-dependent neighborhoods in Brooklyn. While the Second Ave. line, whose fate was seemingly intertwined with the Nostrand and Utica Avenue plans, is now under way, no one is advocating for service in southern Brooklyn even though the city would be better off for it.