Beginning on Friday, September 23, service on the G train between the Court Sq. stop and the Bedford-Nostrand stop was suspended by the MTA due to construction, affecting many of the commuters and businesses that live off of the G line.
Starting at midnight on Friday, service on the G train was suspended between the two stops, and is not expected to resume until five AM on Monday morning.
The exact nature of the construction could not be released for security reasons, according to an MTA official. The G train has been down twice within the past week, between different stops, affecting both the Brooklyn and Queens bound routes.
Landon Peer, a nineteen-year-old jazz student at the New School, lives off the Classon stop of the G train and had to face the tough facts of commuting this weekend.
“I had to take the bus, which is very frustrating because they don’t run very regularly,” said Peer. Peer spent the better part of two hours journeying home after a party Friday night. “The MTA did a good job of scheduling the construction on a weekend, as to not mess up the work week, but some of us have places to go on the weekends.” In addition to having to find a new route, Peer struggled with the short notice. Peer said, “The MTA posted the notice on Friday afternoon, so really I had no idea until then that I may have to change my plans this weekend.”
A local restaurant owner off of the Nassau Avenue stop, who would prefer to remain anonymous, was pleased to find out that the G train was down in his direction. “Being close to Williamsburg, I feel that I already lose diners to the restaurants on Bedford Avenue. When the G train is down, more people stay in the community, rather than venturing into Manhattan. More people staying means more diners eating,” he said on Saturday evening.
The G train is notorious for its service, and an online search proves such. On Urban Dictionary, a contributor based definition website, the G train was defined as “annoying, unreliable, and/or weak and a waste of time”, by member “Jobu”. However, the wait is not the only impact of the G train on the community.
Joseph Heathcott, Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the New School, made sense of the effects of a subway line closed for construction. “Disruptions and closures of subway lines have a significant impact on both the local communities along the route and the region as a whole,” Heathcott wrote in an email correspondence. “Short term disruptions can be absorbed economically without too much difficulty, but long term closures or re-routings can cause a ripple effect of economic problems (not to mention hardship and inconvenience to commuters).”
The G train is scheduled to resume service between the Court Sq. and Bedford Nostrand stops early Monday morning. No further construction is currently posted for the G line.
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