New Express F Trains Are Actually A Cut To Service, Pols Say

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — The MTA has touted four daily express F trains coming to Brooklyn later this year as a response to community feedback, but local elected officials say the service change actually ignores months of complaints from riders.

The transit agency announced Wednesday that two trains during morning rush hour and two trains during evening rush hour will skip local stops between the Church Avenue and Jay Street-MetroTech stations starting in September.

Officials said the express trains, which used to operate on the subway line back in the 1970s, will shorten commutes for riders that often spend 50 minutes or more commuting to Manhattan from Brooklyn. The morning express trains, between 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m., will be Manhattan-bound and the evening express trains, between 5 p.m. and 5:40 p.m., will be Coney Island-bound.

But local elected officials who have been speaking out about F trains that have been skipping local stops without notice say the change will actually be a hindrance to constituents that already struggle to reach their Brooklyn stop.

"We would be delighted if they were actually adding F express service. But this plan adds no service whatsoever, it simply eliminates service at six local stations that are already experiencing over-crowding,"said Council Member Brad Lander, who created a survey about the "Rogue F Express" trains earlier this year. "They have been running a rogue F express for months, often skipping local stops with no notice or even announcement. Despite the effort to dress this up as an improvement for some commuters, bypassing these stations amounts to cutting service for thousands of other riders.”

Lander and other elected officials have argued for months that the MTA had already been adding in these express F trains without notifying riders who often get trapped inside the train until they are far from home. The MTA has maintained that there was no systematic shift in place — until now — but the elected officials said Lander's survey showed otherwise.

The council member's survey of 250 riders found that all but four days in January at least some riders have fallen victim to the #RogueFExpress. The results revealed that 75 percent of riders missed their stop when the F train went rogue and 63 percent said they heard no announcement about the change before they boarded.

Lander and other elected officials — including state Sen. Brian Kavanaugh, Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon and Assembly Member Robert Carroll — sent a letter to the MTA in March about the rogue trains.

"It’s disappointing that the MTA has decided to reduce service to stations that thousands of New Yorkers use during peak hours without consulting the communities that will be negatively affected," Kavanaugh said about Wednesday's announcement. "It’s especially troubling given the concerns our community has articulated to the MTA in the past regarding frequent unannounced irregularities in service that have led the F train to skip stops."

Not all elected officials were unhappy with the shift, though.

The MTA included about a dozen elected officials who touted the new express trains as a way to cut commutes for Brooklyn riders.

"I’m glad the MTA has finally said yes to the train express, after many years of advocacy," state Sen. Andrew Gounardes said. "The new service will shave valuable time off of the commutes of tens of thousands of southern Brooklynites. We need to work to ensure that every community with seriously long commute times gains access to express service.”

Their excitement about the new trains reflects the feelings of many riders that live on either end of the Church Avenue and Jay Street stops where the F train will switch to express. Even with the Rogue F Express, some riders have said they enjoy when the trains skip local stops because they can get to their destination faster.

The F train's 26-stop section between Broadway-Lafayette Street to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue is the longest portion of local-only service of any subway line in the city's system, the MTA said.