Smoother Sailing For L Train Riders On Sunday, As Many Find Other Routes

From a grueling start on Friday night to a cooling ambivalence on Saturday, the L train slowdown seemed to lock into rhythm on Sunday, with 20-minute headways mostly behaving themselves and customers generally over the initial shock.

Sunday’s smooth sailing could be attributed to lower ridership, typical of the last day of the weekend. But the MTA has made one goal clear: they’re hoping to deflate L ridership to lower than usual for this 15-18 month period of tunnel repair work by encouraging riders to use alternative routes.

In Manhattan, the M14 bus is the current cross-town alternative to the L train. On Sunday afternoon, buses were spaced about three minutes apart at the 8th Avenue/14th Street stop.

One bus rider, Matt FX, told Gothamist his wallet was thanking him for taking the $2.75 bus. He admitted, somewhat begrudgingly, he’s spent somewhere between $100 and $200 this weekend taking Ubers, just to avoid the L train.

“Twenty minutes is the threshold for me,” said Matt FX, who lives in Bushwick but grew up in the West Village.

He recalled having to take the F train to Brooklyn sometimes and realizing that train normally runs every 20 or 30 minutes.

“There are plenty of trains that take forever,” he said, as the bus approached 1st Avenue. “It just sucks the L is about to join them.”

The M14 made it across 14th Street from 8th Avenue to 1st Avenue in about 16 minutes, with the light Sunday afternoon traffic offering a possible glimpse into what bus commuting will be like when 14th officially becomes a bus-way in June.

MTA workers were standing at the entrances to the L train station, steering commuters to their fastest possible route. West-bound commuters were urged to save time by taking the M14 bus.

Down on the platform of the 1st Avenue station, some riders said even though they were caught off-guard by how badly things initially went on Friday night, they were mostly adapting to the changes.

Zachary Sherry, who lives in Bed-Stuy and takes the L every day, said he was late to his retail job this morning.

“Today was my ‘try it once’ [day],” said Sherry, explaining that being late means losing wages. “I'll find my way around, I'll figure it out. I'm thinking I'll probably just go to the M train, because I've heard that it's a better route.”

Getting off at the Bedford Avenue stop in Brooklyn looks a bit like a warzone these days, due to ongoing station renovation. A dozen or so MTA workers patrolled the platform there, some of them droning helpful directions into a megaphone to keep people moving.

One transit staff member, wearing a fluorescent orange vest, helped a woman carry her stroller up the stairs at Bedford. The staffer was Sarah Meyer, the Chief Customer Officer of New York City Transit.

“Just getting the word out and making sure that we all know where there is alternate service is our primary goal and challenge,” Meyer told Gothamist, estimating she’d spent about 18 hours in the subway system since Friday.

When asked what led to the inaccurate countdown clocks in stations and on the MTA app on Saturday, Meyer explained that this was the first time NYCT was dealing with a schedule where trains were being intentionally held, meaning arrival and departure times aren’t the same.

“At Union Square and at Bedford and Lorimer, there are holds built in to maintain the one track operation,” she said, now that trains in both directions are sharing a single track. “So we had to alter some of our automated software and automated announcements to account for these holds in a way that had never been done before.”

Meyer said there are still some hold times at Union Square and at Lorimer that might be off by a couple of minutes, but the agency will be evaluating their accuracy over the course of the next week and will make modifications if necessary.

As for Sunday, Meyer said service seemed to be going smoothly. To her, it indicated that people are adjusting away from the L train and are flocking to alternative train lines and routes. She estimated that the M line has seen a 50% increase in service this weekend alone; MTA spokesperson Max Young later confirmed that Meyer’s estimate was accurate.

One service change that’s meant to encourage L riders to peel off and take nearby G-J-M trains is the introduction of two “Williamsburg Link” bus lines. They’re free, more like shuttle buses, and are scheduled to run every 3 minutes during the day on weekends. They were mostly empty on Sunday afternoon, with one bus operator telling Gothamist he’d taken 4 loops around his route and had very few riders.

Overall, Sunday’s L train riders seemed to give it a fairly even score. Many commuters mentioned how helpful MTA staff members at each station have been. (The MTA says 200 workers have been distributing information this weekend.) Most said they found the station countdown clocks to be mostly accurate, and no one reported having to wait more than 20 minutes.

Robert Barnes, who manages a music studio in Williamsburg, called this the least harmful solution. Riders who were used to waiting up to 10 minutes for an L train will now need to build in double that time, just to be safe. Which didn't faze Barnes.

“They extended [wait times] by ten minutes. Ten minutes!” Barnes exclaimed. “I mean, how could anybody be mad at that in New York City?”

Update: This post has been updated to reflect the MTA’s confirmation that the M line saw a 50% increase in ridership and that 200 workers have been distributing information about the slowdown this weekend.

Shumita Basu is a host, producer and reporter in the newsroom. You can follow her on Twitter @shubasu.