Important G Train Station Rehab Postponed

Smith-Ninth rehab will cost more and take longer
By Mike McLaughlin
The Brooklyn Paper

It’s the same F-ing story at the crumbling Smith-Ninth Street station: repairs are going to cost more — much more — and take much longer.

As recently as June, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it would spend $187.8 million to rebuild the elevated F and G tracks from Carroll Street to Fourth Avenue, and renovate the aging Smith-Ninth street station.

But on Wednesday, MTA spokeswoman Deirdre Parker told The Brooklyn Paper that the work would cost “upwards of a quarter-billion dollars.”

The track work on the so-called Culver Viaduct is still scheduled to begin early next year and finish in 2012.

But the renovation of the decrepit Smith-Ninth street stop — which requires closing the station for ninth months — has been pushed back to 2011 from 2010.

That’s a mixed blessing for straphangers who abhor the conditions at the highest platform in the subway system, but don’t want to have to trek to the Fourth Avenue or Carroll Street portals to hop on a train. (The MTA says it will provide shuttle buses.)

“I think ‘dingy’ is the best way to describe the condition of everything in this station — everywhere you look is just one big, ‘Ew,’” said Jason Coyne, a Carroll Gardens resident. “And now they’re delaying the fix-up process? If it looks like this now, imagine how gross it’s going to be next year, and the year after that.”

That goes double for people who board at the Fourth Avenue station. Last November, the MTA announced it planned to revamp the span over Fourth Avenue by installing expansive windows for views up and down the boulevard. The MTA scrapped that proposal in June due to spiraling budgets throughout the transit agency.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

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