The MTA will change J and M service on weekdays and weekends from October 13 into late November while crews replace 29-year-old track switches between the Marcy Avenue and Hewes Street stations in Williamsburg. J trains will run local on weekday middays, and on five weekends J trains will not run between Myrtle Avenue-Broadway and Delancey Street/Essex Street, where free shuttle buses will replace them.
The work will also bring cranes and street closures to Williamsburg on five weekends between Friday, October 16, and Sunday, November 22. A New York City Transit notice lists potential closures of Rodney Street between Division Avenue and South 5th Street and of Keap Street between Broadway and South 5th Street from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Fridays and 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, and of Broadway between Marcy Avenue and Keap Street from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Parking will be prohibited on Broadway between Marcy Avenue and Keap Street.
On Tuesdays through Fridays in the weeks of October 13, October 20, November 3, November 10 and November 17, J trains will run local between Marcy Avenue and Myrtle Avenue-Broadway from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the MTA said.
On the weekends of October 17 and 18 and October 24 and 25, from 3:30 a.m. Saturday to 10 p.m. Sunday, J trains will run only between Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer and Myrtle Avenue-Broadway, and shuttle buses will replace them between Myrtle Avenue-Broadway and Essex Street, according to the MTA. The M will run in two sections, between Middle Village-Metropolitan Avenue and Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues and between Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues and Myrtle Avenue-Broadway, with trains every 20 minutes. The same changes return on the weekends of November 7 and 8, November 14 and 15, and November 21 and 22, but the MTA’s announcement and its notices give different start and end days for those weekends, so riders should check the MTA’s service alerts before traveling. The weekend work skips New York City Marathon weekend, October 31 and November 1.
The switches were last replaced in 1997 and connect Williamsburg, Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Ozone Park and Jamaica with Lower Manhattan, the MTA said. “These switches have reached the end of their useful life and replacement of these 29-year-old switches is crucial to the continued reliability of subway service along this corridor,” Megan Flynn, assistant director of government and community relations at New York City Transit, said in a notice to community partners.
Riders can check service on the MTA website or the MyMTA app, call 511, or sign up for real-time email and text alerts. The MTA Weekender newsletter covers weekend service changes.
Featured image: Tdorante10 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
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