Home Service Advisories FASTRACK returns to the Broadway Line

FASTRACK returns to the Broadway Line

by Benjamin Kabak

The Broadway Line will be without overnight service this week. (Click to enlarge)

FASTRACK returned to the Broadway Line tonight at 10 p.m., and the service changes are the same as last time.

  • The N will run between Ditmars Boulevard and Queensboro Plaza and between Stillwell Ave. and Jay St.-Metrotech, making local stops north of 36th St.
  • The Q will run from 57th St./6th Ave. over the Manhattan Bridge via the 6th Ave. line. Q trains will make express stops along the D in Manhattan.
  • R service in Manhattan ends early, and the R shuttle between Bay Ridge and 36th St. will start earlier than normal.

That’s all she wrote until May when FASTRACK returns to shutter the Fourth Ave. line between 36th St. and Bay Ridge.

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11 comments

Nyland8 April 15, 2013 - 11:53 pm

Wouldn’t this more accurately be called the N,Q,R Line??

As someone who lives closer to, and often uses the 1,2,3, it is no less “the Broadway Line” to me.

In fact, the 1,2,3 runs twice as many miles along Broadway as the N,Q,R.

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Benjamin Kabak April 15, 2013 - 11:56 pm

It’s historically been the Broadway line based upon trunk line routes south of the park. Hence, the 1, 2 and 3 are the 7th Ave. line, and the N, Q and R make up the Broadway line.

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Ron April 16, 2013 - 12:00 am

The 1, 2, 3 are officially the (IRT) Broadway-7th Ave Line. To avoid confusion though, they are usually referred to as the 7th Ave line and the N, R, Q are referred to as the Broadway Line. I’m too young to know if people actually referred to the 1, 2, 3 as the Broadway-7th Ave line, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the trunk line colors we know today (red and yellow) helped move towards this.

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Ryan April 16, 2013 - 8:14 am

In Midtown, it runs down the BMT Broadway line.

The B/D run along the 8th AVenue line in upper Manhattan. And yet they are coloured orange. It doesn’t matter.

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Nyland8 April 16, 2013 - 6:44 am

Fair enough. It occurs to me that I might have used that term myself when describing the advantages of running a cross-town subway to Secaucus – as in: “It would, in turn, hit the 8th, 7th, 6th, B’way, Lex, and soon-to-be 2nd Ave trunk lines … “. So I suppose I suffer from the same midtown-centricity as most people.

Which somehow manages to raise more questions. Why do I call the 4,5,6 the Lex instead of the Park ?!!?? It certainly spends as much time on Park Ave below Central Park.

Well … in pursuit of an answer, I just stumbled upon a pair of 1972 IRT maps on flikr. The eastern trunk is called the “IRT LEXINGTON AVE SUBWAY” … with no mention of Park Ave, Lafayette, etc. BUT … the western trunk IS called the “IRT-BROADWAY-7TH AVENUE SUBWAY” So at least the IRT people once thought of themselves as the Broadway Line – at least enough to put it on their map.

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The Cobalt Devil April 16, 2013 - 1:00 pm

“Why do I call the 4,5,6 the Lex instead of the Park ?!!?? It certainly spends as much time on Park Ave below Central Park.”

The 4/5/6 run under Lexington Ave from 125th-42nd Sts (83 blocks) then under Park Ave South from 42nd-14th Sts (28 blocks), so the Lex makes much more sense. Also, Park Ave South wasn’t named as such until 1959; prior to that it was 4th Ave, so calling it the IRT Lex-4th Ave line would be confusing since there’s a 4th Ave Line on the BMT in Brooklyn.

If you wanted to be a stickler, you could call it the IRT Lex-Park Ave South-4th Ave-Lafayette St-Park Row-Broadway Line, but that’d be hard to put on destination signs! 🙂

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Edgar April 16, 2013 - 1:09 pm

What a horrible week of Cuomo Fastrack service cuts. This turns a one-seat ride for people near Union Square on the N/R trains into a 3-seat ride (F/M at 14th to Q at W 4th to the N at Atlantic/Dekalb!)

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The Cobalt Devil April 16, 2013 - 1:52 pm

Ot they can take the IRT #4 to Atlantic Ave to catch the N. The 4 train runs pretty often at night and is a quicker shot downtown than the N could ever be.

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Eric Brasure April 16, 2013 - 2:36 pm

What does Cuomo have to do with Fastrack?

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Lady Feliz April 16, 2013 - 3:15 pm

Edgar doesn’t like Cuomo, so he’ll try to insinuate that Fastrack is somehow the Gov’s fault/problem, when in reality they are doing necessary preventive maintenance that has nothing to do with the Gov. Some folks need to throw their politics into everything, which is boring to the Nth degree.

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Ryan April 16, 2013 - 4:31 pm

Cuomo is really stupid in this sense:

What, no funding for mass transit?

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