Culver Viaduct Rehabilitation

The east side of 4th Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets in Brooklyn is currently a blighted one. The subway entrance and storefronts will reopen next year. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

The main thrust of the Culver Viaduct rehab involves a complete overhaul of the station at Smith and 9th Sts. At the highest altitude in the system, the F and G stop has great views of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan Skyline, and it is a mess. The walls and staircases have holes; the paint is flaking off; the viaduct is sheathed in mesh to prevent it from falling. In a nutshell, it needs work.

Down the road, though, the station at 4th Ave./9th Sts. is no better. Windows on the once-beautiful overpass haven’t seen the light of day for decades, and the platform and canopies are in equally as bad a shape as those at Smith St. Still, as the rehab project’s cost ballooned, the MTA had to scale back work at 4th Avenue. Now, though, the on-again, off-again rehab at that station is firmly back on thanks to the MTA’s component-based approach to repair.

Even better, though, is news from the past week that will improve pedestrian flow and passenger safety: Thanks to an infusion of funds from Marty Markowitz and Joan Millman will ensure that, as part of the station rehab, the entrances on the east side of 4th Ave. will be reopened as well. As first reported by the Brooklyn Paper and confirmed this week by the MTA, Markowitz will contribute $2 million for station improvements and Assembly Member Joan Millman secured $800,000 for work on the 78-year-old station.

Overstating his role just a bit in securing less than one percent of the funds needed for the entire Culver Viaduct rehab, Markowitz nevertheless spoke of the changes coming to the station and his vision for 4th Avenue as a grand Brooklyn Boulevard. “With funding I have allocated along with Assemblywoman Joan Millman, the MTA can pull back the billboards, fix the crumbling bricks and restore this 1930s art deco beauty to its former glory,” he said. “Its location on 4th Avenue at the crossroads of Gowanus and Prospect Park is highly visible from Downtown Brooklyn to Sunset Park, and its restoration as a signature streetscape element will mark the beginning of what I hope will be many more efforts to transform the entire stretch of 4th Avenue from the Atlantic Ocean to Atlantic Avenue into my grand vision for a magnificent Brooklyn Boulevard.”

Millman chose to focus on the pedestrian improvements on the east side of the station. Assemblywoman Millman added: “As more people discover how wonderful it is to live in Brooklyn, especially along and near 4th Avenue, the increased demands on mass transit must be met. I also look forward to the reopening of the east side station house on 4th Avenue,” she said.

It’s hard to understate how important it is to reopen those east side entrances. Right now, those heading to and from this popular station must cross 4th Ave. to get there, and the intersection at 4th Ave. and 9th St. has long been one of the more dangerous ones in the city. This entrance, long a blight on the area, will be a big help to those looking to avoid crossing the busy street.

As for the details of the work, the MTA says all entrance doors and storefront windows will be replaced. The authority hopes to bring in new retail tenants in 2012, but the entrance itself will remain unstaffed. Below is a slideshow of photos I snapped there last week. The physical improvements will be welcomed indeed.

This rendering will forever remain a very nice picture.

It’s starting, and I hope it doesn’t end up costing the city the Second Ave. subway yet again.

In a move that isn’t too shocking, the MTA has abandoned its plans to do a full overhaul of the 4th Ave. station on the F line. While the agency will still rehab all of the tracks and Culver Viaduct structure itself, in an effort to save nearly $65 million, the MTA has withdrawn the station rehab plans. This move is a big blow to an area sorely in need of an aesthetically appealing station and is sure to be an early warning sign of more construction cuts to come.

Mike McLaughlin of The Brooklyn Paper broke the news late last week:

The almighty transportation agency has abandoned its ambitious plans to renovate the shabby Fourth Avenue station in Park Slope into a glittering, light-filled, Euro-styled stunner.

Just last November, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority showed off renderings (left) of the elevated F-train platform basking in sunlight from new windows, renovations that were part of a larger project to reconstruct the crumbling elevated tracks on the F and G line between the Carroll Street and Fourth Avenue.

The trackwork is still set to start later this year and finish in 2012. And improvements to the equally beleaguered Smith–Ninth Street station are still slated to begin next year. But the overall $250-million project has been trimmed to $187.8 million, so something had to give, said Deirdre Parker, a spokeswoman for New York City Transit.

“Work on the Fourth Avenue station was never officially funded. Consideration has been deferred until the next capital plan,” Parker said in an e-mail to The Brooklyn Paper. And, yes, that next capital plan will roll around in, oh, 2013.

While the Smith-9th Sts. station will get its much-needed aesthetic overhaul, this news is just another step backwards for an MTA that has spent much of 2008 backtracking on promised upgrades. It’s easy to renege on promises of aesthetic upgrades; they don’t impact train performance. But as many transit rider advocates note in McLaughlin’s article, appearances matter. (Ed Note: See clarification at bottom.)

Meanwhile, I can’t help but fear for the future of other big-ticket items. A whole bunch of Q stops are set for renovation, and various projects — Chambers St. on the BMT Nassaue Line, South Ferry, Bowling Green, to name a few — are in different stages right now. Could these all face the axe as the MTA looks to trim its budget? Are we looking an age in which station aesthetics – already a sore point for the MTA — are sacrificed even further in the name of money?

And then what happens when we start looking at the big-ticket capital projects? Are the Second Ave. Subway and LIRR East Side Access projects in danger?

In the various questions posted to Gene Russianoff on The Times’ City Room blog, more than a few straphangers focused on station aesthetics. As anyone who’s been to London or Paris or Moscow can attest to, New York’s subways are a visual mess, and I fear that, as the pursestrings tighten, this is a situation that will not improve any time soon.

Addendum: Paul Fleuranges, NYC Transit’s Vice President, Corporate Communications, writes in with a clarification and a correction this morning. “There was never any intent to perform a full station rehabilitation of the 4th Avenue station during the Culver Viaduct rehabilitation; as such work is not contained in the funding envelope for this particular capital improvement in the 2005 – 2009 program,” he says.

Instead, the work will include surface reconstruction in a station that has seen parts of its outdoor platform beginning to crumble. The 4th Ave. renderings were simply views of what the station could look like if it were to receive funding in the capital plan that covers 2010-2014.