September 24, 2008

Brooklyn11211 Blog: G to Have its Own Line Manager?

Neighborhood Threat
All subway lines to get a General Manager
September 22, 2008 at 1:50 pm

Gothamist reports that all subway lines will get a General Manager soon. Currently, the only lines that do have a GM are the 7 and the L. I’m not a daily L rider, but after our experience with the General Manager on the 7 train, I am overjoyed to hear that the G train will soon have a repository for our complaints.

The experiment calls for a general manager to take charge of each subway line and make “quick” decisions over train schedules, maintenance of stations, and riders’ complaints.

We are avid Mets fans and spend 30+ games per year out at Shea. In 2007, the MTA instituted Express service after the games, which (aside from the B61, but we’ve covered that) eliminated any temptation to drive to the game, not when we could be home in half an hour. However, in 2008, they instituted a “Super-Express” which initially only stopped at Woodside, Queensboro Plaza and Grand Central. While we just got off at Queensboro to wait for the B61 (as creepy as it is to do that), the boyfriend wrote to the GM, pointing out that eliminating the Court Square stop deprived riders of the connection to the G.

Three weeks later they wrote back to tell him that three other people also complained of the same thing, and that they had reinstituted that stop. (No, seriously. They even made announcements at Shea about it.) You can read about our adventure
here.

If four people could cause that to happen on the 7 train, imagine what a band of determined Greenpoint residents can do to transform G train service.

Coming up: a bus driver reveals the complaint number of the Grand Street depot (after 6 buses went by on Friday OUT OF SERVICE)


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