It’s still a few years off, but many people in New York City are already preparing for the impending shut down of the L train. The L is one of many lines of the subway that carries people from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and vice versa, often during the peak of rush hour. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) plans to shut down the only tunnel that carries the L train underneath the East River in January of 2019 for a year or more to repair serious damage that was caused by Hurricane Sandy back in 2012.
During the hurricane, more than 7 million gallons of floodwater rushed into the L train’s tunnel, and according to the city’s officials, repairs are not optional. The city determined that a full shutdown for a short period of time was preferable to a partial shutdown for a longer period of time. Commuters and residents, however, may or may not agree.
While the repairs do indeed need to be made to the tunnel, the L train closure raises some serious public transportation issues for the 300,000 people in Brooklyn and the surrounding areas that use it daily. If they relied on the subway to get them where they needed to go before, what are they supposed to do when it shuts down?
The plan is to implement new bus rapid transit routes.
According to Wired, the city plans to increase bus availability to the residents of Brooklyn by adding new devoted bus lanes, putting more buses on the road, and figuring out a way to clear the cars and business delivery traffic out of the way to make room for the new bus traffic. If the city, residents, MTA, and bus drivers can all cooperate, this closure can be a success story, but for a city that relies heavily on underground transportation, the transition to buses may need a little bit of encouragement, perhaps from a city like Grand Rapids, MI.
