Miscommunications

My wife and I have been living in Carroll Gardens for over six months now. It wasn't easy picking a neighborhood in New York, certainly not when we were coming from DC and lacked a firm grasp of where we would fit in NYC. So far, Carroll Gardens has been pretty good to us. Everything, except for our access to Manhattan. See, when we were moving into the area, Google and the MTA told us a relatively straightforward story: 10 minute walk to the subway (we're on the waterfront) and a 15-20 minute subway ride into lower Manhattan. All told, it meant that living here didn't place us much further from where we needed to be than an apartment near a local stop on the Upper East or West Side.

Unfortunately, there was a hitch. It's called the IND Culver Line.

Now, I am no stranger to the details of public transit systems and the need for capital spending. I am a huge advocate for public transportation (we don't even own a car), and I understand the massive repairs the MTA needed to undertake on the Culver Viaduct. And coming from DC, we were no strangers to weekend line and station closures or occasional infrastructure failings such as cracked rails and failing signals. We knew what we were getting into when we moved in, and we were willing to wait out the construction and hopefully experience better service when everything was said and done. So my problem isn't with the MTA doing construction or periodically curtailing or halting service on our line. That's how we fix decades of poor and deferred maintenance. My gripe is with the MTA's inability to communicate to its riders. 

This was thrown into sharp relief during this weekend's track work. Per the MTA's announcements, Coney Island-bound F trains were running express from Jay St to Church Av, stopping at 7 Av, and there was no G service south of Hoyt-Schermerhorn. And that's exactly how it played out when I took the F home from the Village on Saturday afternoon - express to 7 Av and a local back north to Carroll St. That's why I was a little surprised to see a Coney-bound F stopping at Bergen St early on Sunday morning. When I came home late that afternoon, my morning experience was confirmed: we stopped local at Bergen, then I got off at Carroll. I took a glance at the signs in Carroll St on my way out, just to be sure I wasn't mistaken. Sure enough, it told me that the F would run express in that direction (bypassing where I was standing) until 5am Monday.

This wasn't exactly a problem for me; I got home quicker than I otherwise would have on the express-local switch. But it became a real problem when I discussed my confusion with my wife, who had been out of town for the weekend and not quite aware of the planned work. Although I was in for the night and could enjoy a quicker-than-expected ride home, she was planning on meeting friends in Greenpoint. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't answer her big question: did my trip on the F mean the G was running from Carroll? Lacking an answer, I pulled up the Weekender to find out. Here, it became abundantly clear that the MTA's communications did not match service patterns. Weekender informed me that the F train I had just exited did not, in fact, exist. It was running express until 5am Monday. I pulled up the main MTA service alerts page to see if that had been corrected, only to see the same advisory: F trains will run express from Jay St-MetroTech to Church Av/no G service from Hoyt-Schermerhorn to Church Av.

So what could we trust? The Coney Island-bound F had been running local all day. I had seen the local at Bergen St just after 8am. But did F trains on the local track imply G trains south of Hoyt? Thanks to the MTA's lack of information, there was no way of knowing. Maybe they had finished work early and reopened the line to all trains. Maybe they just switched the F back. From our home, we could divine nothing. That left few options for her. She could walk to Carroll St and wait, hoping that the G was running, and if not, ride the F to Jay St, then the A to Hoyt, then the G shuttle to Bedford-Nostrand, then the G to Greenpoint Av. Not exactly the most pleasant ride. Other than that, she could take the B61 to the B62, with an interminable bus-to-bus transfer in the cold. Thanks to weekend track work, there were no options available via Manhattan, as the 7 was not running in Manhattan and the F was bypassing 14 St (and therefore the L). Save for Manhattan, none of these options were impossible, but all of them would have added another 30+ minutes to a trip that should take less than 40, door to door. Unfortunately, we had no way of knowing if it would be the quick trip or the long one; only trial and error could tell her.

In the end she decided not to go. Faced with the uncertainty and the possibility of an extra hour or more in transit time, or the cost of a taxi each way, she chose to stay in. Had we known the G was not running to Carroll, that probably would have been the case anyway, but the opacity of the MTA created endless frustration. After all, if the G had been running, then going would be a no-brainer. This is where I fault the MTA. They're (relatively) good at telling us when a disruption is shutting down or slowing part of a line. They're (relatively) good at informing us of weekend and weeknight track work with some advance notice. But if a line reopens early? The MTA is silent. Reopening early isn't simply some bonus to straphangers; it alters plans and it impacts commutes for countless people who work weekends and weeknights. Just as we have a right to know if the F won't stop at our station this weekend, we have a right to know when those plans change, and whether those changes will affect the other lines that were out of service. It's a basic courtesy to riders and, more importantly, it's just common sense.