Boo Hoo, The L Train’s Not Running
I live along the R line in Brooklyn, which means at night I usually can’t take the train home. Just twice in the last two weeks I discovered that the R’s not running at night between Atlantic and 36th Street by getting off the F at 9th Street and seeing the entrance taped off. No signs or anything; just a red barrier. (Pro-tip: did you know the Fifth Avenue bus doesn’t run with much frequency after midnight during the week?) But anyone who’s lived with the R for 30 years knows to expect this sort of thing; even when the train is running, no one who can make it to 59th Street on a late-night express ever seriously expects the R to show up, too.
But no one’s writing articles about it (except me right now?). But, geez, shut down the L train at night and you’ve got reporters on the scene. “Leave it to the MTA to screw us over again,” one rider told the Brooklyn Paper. Every weeknight into September, service on the line will stop after 11:45pm and not restart until 5am—which will have a negative impact on the local economy, locals said, keeping late-nighters away from the bars and restaurants, plus it’s also a major inconvenience for night-shift commuters and Manhattan revelers. Or, you know, a minor one, for most people? One rider told the Paper “she has been taking the M train home and the walk adds an extra half an hour to her usually short trip.” Yeah, it sucks; it does. And I get it. But it’s not just L train riders—the MTA is fucking us all over! G train riders! R train riders! Bah, at least it’s summer.
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