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Council to MTA: Stop neglecting G train

By Matthew Sweeney | msweeney@am-ny.com

April 9, 2008

The City Council lashed out at the MTA Tuesday, accusing officials of neglecting G riders with shortened subway cars and a shortened line.

The council's Transportation Committee also passed a resolution calling on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to "immediately improve service on the G line and to not implement any additional service cuts."

Riders along the G, which serves booming neighborhoods of Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill, among others, have a list of complaints about their line. They cite four-car trains that force riders to run down the platform, a northern terminus on weekdays at Court Square in Queens instead of service along Queens Boulevard, overcrowding at stations in Greenpoint, and above ground transfers.

Peter Cafiero, chief of operations planning for New York City Transit said the agency was "leading rather than following ridership growth." However, there is no plan to add more train cars in the near future. And the defeat of congestion pricing, which would have allotted some fund for mass transit, also has forestalled other planned improvements to the G line.

To accommodate rehab work, transit officials say they are going forward with a plan to extend the G past its current southern terminus at Smith and Ninth streets to Church Avenue. Sometime in late 2008 or early 2009, riders at F-only stations -- such as Seventh Avenue, 15th Street, Fort Hamilton Pkwy, and Church Avenue -- will see their rush hour wait shrink a couple of minutes with the added G service. Transit has yet to decide if the Church Avenue extension will be permanent.

Gov. David Paterson yesterday insisted that the loss of congestion pricing did not excuse the hole in the MTA's budget. Speaking at a breakfast meeting of the Association for a Better New York, the governor announced that he has appointed Richard Ravitch, who served as MTA chairman in the 1980s, as head of a "blue ribbon panel" that will seek to find ways to close the capital budget deficit.

"We look forward to working with the panel to identify revenue sources for the MTA's critical funding needs," said MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin.