MTA board member tells B37 advocates: Keep up the pressure
Transit advocates trying to convince the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to extend the B37 bus route to Court Street instead of terminating the soon-to-be reinstated bus line at the Barclays Center are making significant progress, according to a man with inside information.
MTA board member Allen Cappelli, who has been pushing his colleagues to restore the line to its full Bay Ridge-to-Court Street service, said he was emboldened by the large turnout of community residents at a Jan. 27 meeting of the MTA’s Transit and Bus Committee at the agency’s Madison Avenue headquarters, where the B37 was a topic of discussion.
“It was a very good group of people. I was very pleased to see it,” Cappelli told the Brooklyn Eagle after the meeting. The large turnout reflected the widespread support for the full restoration, he said.
Under the current plan, the B37 will resume running in June after a nearly four-year hiatus. The MTA eliminated the bus line in 2010 as a cost-cutting measure and voted last year to restore the bus line. But the B37, which used to run from Shore Road in Bay Ridge to Court Street in downtown Brooklyn, including a stop at the New York State Supreme Court building on Adams Street, will now operate between Shore Road and the Barclays Center on Atlantic Avenue, some 10 blocks short of its former terminus point.