Manhattan Residents Fume As MTA Neglects To Send Top Officials To First L Train Open House

Not present last night: Andy Byford, Polly Trottenberg, or Ronnie Hakim

When Governor Andrew Cuomo swooped in earlier this year to cancel the full L train shutdown plan, replacing it with a new proposal to repair the tunnel one tube at a time on nights and weekends, the feeling among many New Yorkers was one of impotence. Countless hours spent parsing the details of the old plan with transit officials across Brooklyn and Manhattan had apparently been worthless, and that finely-tuned mitigation proposal effectively cast aside for a still-hazy directive cobbled together in a matter of weeks.

The ensuing months only seemed to confirm residents' fears: their granular, neighborhood-level concerns about the project, painstakingly addressed through a robust community engagement process last time around, would now be handled at the top.

The MTA's first open house on the new L train plan, held Thursday at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on 14th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, did little to change the community's mind. Not a single top-level MTA official showed up to the event, including MTA Managing Director Ronnie Hakim, who is overseeing the new L train plan, or New York City Transit President Andy Byford, who'd previously attended nearly every town hall on the project, but is rumored to have been sidelined by Cuomo's meddling.

People noticed.

"No one here tonight is in a position to make a decision, so we’re presented with options but with no sense of what is going to happen," fumed Richard Brause, a resident of 14th Street.

Christine Berthet, co-chair of the CB4 Transportation Committee, echoed the frustration: “I think for Andy Byford to get the rug pulled from under him by Cuomo is really shocking."

A single (non-voting) MTA board member was in attendance on Thursday, though he did not exactly bring reassuring news. According to board member Andrew Albert, that third-party monitor—repeatedly promised by Cuomo and his Acting MTA Chairman Freddy Ferrer as an independent check on the new plan—won't actually have the power to review or second guess the project after all.

For their part, the MTA claims that the goal of the open house format was "for customers and neighbors to be able to engage one-on-one with project officials about their individual trips and concerns," adding that they "received a lot of positive feedback from people who appreciated the opportunity to speak directly and in detail with people responsible for executing our plans."

An MTA spokesperson also noted that over a dozen MTA officials were present, including Matt Best, the project executive "responsible for directing the construction team." But Best is not a member of the MTA's executive leadership, nor is he in charge of any of the MTA's discrete divisions.

(To be fair to the MTA, I also was not in attendance on Thursday. Though had I been tasked with overseeing the eleventh hour change to a major transit disruption soon to affect hundreds of thousands of people, I probably would've at least popped in).

Beyond the disappointment over the MTA's no-show, residents said they were growing increasingly concerned about the lack of clarity on certain details of the L train project, which is expected to begin next month. For Manhattanites, chief among those concerns is the issue of 14th Street; while the former plan for a car-free busway on the busy corridor is almost certainly abandoned, the issue of what comes next remains an open question.

Select Bus Service will be introduced on 14th Street at some point, though that won't happen for at least a few months. Before then, the DOT and the MTA will have to decide whether the new bus lane will be curbside, or offset one lane away from the curb. Meanwhile, plenty of transit advocates are holding out hope that officials will reverse course, eventually realizing that the busway is necessary to keeping riders moving on one of the slowest routes in the city.

As for the actual L train, some attendees said they didn't believe that the expected 20 minute headways during nights and weekends would be sufficient for regular riders. "The train is going to be so slow, I’m not going to want to ride it, my daughter isn’t going to ride it," said Susie Beir, a 23rd Street resident whose 15-year-old spends her weekends in Bushwick at a roller derby. Beir added that preparatory weekend work on the L has already forced her to "spend a fortune" on cabs for her daughter to get to Brooklyn.

Of course, this being the West Village, there was also plenty of complaints about bike lanes, most of them coming from elderly residents who want the already-installed lanes on 12th and 13th Streets ripped out. Amid all the L train whiplash, the continuity on this point is almost comforting (particularly because, unlike the Grand Street bike network in Brooklyn, the DOT has pledged to keep these bike lanes, for now at least.)

The next L train open house is scheduled for Wednesday evening at the Williamsburg Northside School on North 7th and Meeker Avenue. We'll see who shows up.

Reporting by WNYC's Stephen Nessen.