If your weekend has ever been wrecked by a subway shutdown in North Brooklyn, there is a proposal making the rounds you might like. Instead of dumping G train riders onto a shuttle bus when a neighboring line closes, extend the G itself, all the way out to Forest Hills or Coney Island. That is exactly what the proposal argues.
The G is the only major subway line that never touches Manhattan. It serves North Brooklyn and Western Queens, and it is forever getting truncated, rerouted, or replaced by buses during the weekend maintenance that the rest of the system schedules around it. For the neighborhoods along it, from Greenpoint and Williamsburg down through Bed-Stuy and out to the Queens end, a weekend shutdown can turn a 20-minute trip into an ordeal on a “slower than walking” shuttle.
Rather than cutting G service when an adjacent line closes, lengthen it, running the train to Forest Hills or Coney Island so riders keep a subway connection through the disruption. The proposal points to big summer events, the World Cup, Pride, Juneteenth, when North Brooklyn and Western Queens fill up with people and transit options collapse right when they are needed most. Local businesses that depend on weekend foot traffic would benefit too.
This is a proposal, not an MTA plan. Rider ideas like this often get ignored until enough people repeat them. But a lot of good transit fixes start here, with a regular rider noticing that the agency’s default, replacing the train with a bus, is the worst option for the neighborhoods that depend on it.
If you ride the G and you are tired of losing your weekends to shuttle buses, bring it up with your local elected officials and at MTA and Community Board meetings. Service changes start as proposals that enough riders refuse to let drop. The G has been treated as the system’s afterthought for decades. The people who ride it are the ones who can change that.
