Job Growth In Brooklyn Is Actually Causing Problems
Maybe not an especially big surprise to anyone who has to deal with this on a daily basis, but turns out, the MTA isn’t really set up to deal with the 24 percent increase in Brooklyn-based workers that’s happened over the past decade, and as such, commute times have gotten terrible.
A new report from the Partnership for New York City shows that the average New Yorker now commutes 48 minutes to work each day (13 minutes above the national average), and that the problem is particularly bad for the 2 million workers that commute in between Brooklyn and Queens. Given that the only real option is the G—and that’s a shaky one at best—most of them elect to drive, which creates its own congestion problems.
“In order to address this problem in the short term, the city should increase its bus service between the two boroughs, potentially expanding bus rapid transit in the area,” the report said. It also singles out the business hub surrounding the Brooklyn Navy Yard as being “poorly served by the public transit system that was designed and built as much as a century ago.” Again, that won’t come as a huge surprise to anyone who actually has to deal with it.
The report stops short of prescribing any too-specific solutions (like the implementation of the mythical, too-good-to-be-true X train), but notes that the city needs to make its transport system more “flexible” for commutes in between boroughs. Well, yes, of course it does. Seems a little obvious, but at least someone official is trying to draw attention to the problem, even if it won’t mean fast solutions for the G.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
