By Raanan Geberer
Brooklyn Eagle
BROOKLYN — The G train, also known as the Brooklyn-Queens Crosstown Line, will no longer live up to its name if a proposal being floated by MTA New York City Transit comes to pass.

In December of 2001, the train, which previously went from Smith-9th Street to 71st Street-Continental Avenue in Forest Hills, Queens, was cut back to a Court House Square northern terminal just one stop over the Queens border during daytime hours.

The reason was the introduction of the new “V� train, which takes up track space on the Queens Boulevard trunk line, to which G connected from Brooklyn. The G continues to go to 71st Continental, but only at nights and on weekends (and recently, weekend service was cut back “until further notice�).

Now, according to a new proposal, the G train, which passes through the growing neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, would be given much-needed additional trains during the afternoon and evening hours. However, it would now terminate at Court House Square at all times.

This is not a “tit-for-tat� proposal, says Gene Russianoff of the public interest group Straphangers Campaign. Rather, even more space on the Queens Boulevard line is needed — this time for the already-existing R train, to which the MTA wants to add more trains.

James Anynansi, an MTA New York City Transit spokesman, stresses that this is only a proposal; that its introduction would depend on how well the MTA does financially during the first quarter; and that if it is formally proposed, it would have to go through several public hearings.

And at these hearings, it would likely get into trouble. Many people in Williamsburg and Greenpoint are still not reconciled to the original cutback on the G, and want service to resume to 71st-Continental full-time. If this is not possible, they say, let the train at least continue to Queens Plaza, where riders can catch a direct transfer to Forest Hills.

“Greenpoint and Williamsburg are fast-growing,� says Amy Cleary, spokeswoman for Assemblyman Joe Lentol, “and many people want to go to the shopping malls in Forest Hills. We don’t have anything like that around here.�

She also attacked another kind of recent cutback: the use of four-car trains on the G line. “I’ve seen many people get into the stations from the entrances on the end, and then sprint toward the center of the platform to get the train. But by the time they get there, the train has already left.�

In addition, the “Save the G Train� organization, headed by veteran transit activist and Williamsburg activist Teresa Toro, is up and running, and popularizes its ideas with its Web site http://www.savetheg.org.

“The Governor and the MTA made a big mistake when they cut G service and put the V in its place. A huge (and growing) number of people ride the G train every day, while the V is a train that no one wants to use,� says the site.

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2008
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