Brooklyn riders, citing Queens service, defend their trains

Two weeks ago, the F train came under attack from riders in Brooklyn who noticed fewer, more crowded trains. These riders, rightly so, were upset with the MTA for cutting back service in an area of the city suffering from gentrification and a population boom.

This week, the F train riders responded to the original article in The Brooklyn Paper with a reply that, at the risk pissing off my fellow denizens of Brooklyn, is nearly as short-sighted as the MTA’s attempts to cut F train service without really acknowledging this service cut.

Jasmine Melzer of Park Slope wrote to Gersh Kuntzman’s paper. (Scroll down for her letter.)

I date the beginning of these problems to the introduction of the V train. Ever since the V came into existence, I have wondered whether Brooklyn was ever represented at the table that gave this service to Queens.

Elementary math tells you that two won’t go into one. For Brooklynites standing on Manhattan subway platforms, watching useless, empty V trains heading for Second Avenue is a constant source of frustration…

For the MTA spokeswoman to simply negate the possibility of either extending V service or utilizing the existing express tracks is to ignore the urgent need of a Brooklyn population that is nearing its historical peak.

Melzer, citing the popularity of the MetroCard as the reason for the subway’s new-found popularity (uh, what?), also calls for express service on the F out to Coney Island. Now, on the surface, Melzer’s ideas seem fairly straightforward. They may even make sense in the grand scheme of the MTA. But it doesn’t hold up.

Melzer starts out by totally dumping on Queens. Now, I’m not from Queens; I’ve never lived in Queens; and the extent of my time in Queens has been to visit friends, Shea Stadium and La Guardia airport. But I have a strong feeling that folks in Queens don’t see those empty V trains as “a constant source of frustration.” I bet Queens residents see them as quite useful.

We’ll chalk this one up to a Brooklyn-centric view of the subway. That’s nearly as bad as all those Manhattanites who call their island the City.

Melzer’s next problematic suggest involves extending the V train into Brooklyn. For the sake of this argument, let’s terminate the V at Church Ave. That would add nearly an extra roundtrip hour of service from 2nd Ave. in Manhattan to Church Ave. in Brooklyn and back. To compensate for this loss of service in Manhattan and Queens, the MTA would have to find some more train cars and some more employees to operate these trains.

Considering how cash-strapped the MTA is these days, that seems like an unnecessary luxury. I would love extra trains to blanket the city, but I would like modernized stations and a 2nd Ave. subway line even more.

Finally, Melzer asks for express service all the way out to Coney Island. Well, I would love express service from my home to my office and back, but it ain’t happening. Express service out to Coney Island is a bit problematic simply because of the way the tracks are set up. First, the switches aren’t in place anymore.

“In the early 1990s, the double crossover just south of Kings Highway enabling trains from Coney Island to switch to the express track was removed and now all F trains now run local on the Culver line. Some trains still terminate at Kings Highway in the evening rush hour,” NYCSubway.org’s write-up on the BMT Culver line note.

If the switches were still in place, the F express trains would stop at Church Ave., Kings Highway and then Coney Island, thus omitting a large number of stops even for an express train. It hardly seems worth it.

In an ideal world, Melzer’s ideas make sense. But not in the financial reality of the MTA. But hey, we can dream.