MTA Pt. 2: Shuttled & Screwed

There's a sign at the DeKalb Ave. subway station that looks old. It's a lighted sign, but no fancy LED graphics or anything, just light bulbs inside that dimly glow through dirty glass letters while the rest of the sign remains blacked out. "Via Bridge," the top part says in incandescent light, to distinguish the B/D/Q line from the N/R that you can catch across the platform, through the tunnel. Under that, the sign reads, "Sixth Ave." Under that, "Broadway." Neither is usually lit up, since the trains all go up 6th Avenue. Until now. Too much to explain in a poster, indeed.

Here, briefly, are some key aspects, or as the MTA optimistically puts it, "highlights," of the Manhattan Bridge reconstruction project. The B, renamed the W, and the D, renamed the Q local, stop at the usual places in Brooklyn. Then, once they cross the bridge, on the rehabilitated southside tracks, they become express versions of the N/R, with the Q local terminating at 57th St., stopping only at Canal and 14th Sts. before they get to 34th St. Now, the old B and D trains still exist. They do the same things as always, they just confine their activities to north of 34th St. You can transfer from the B/D to the W and Q locals at 34th St. Oh, and they've also added a couple of shuttle trains, one going from Queens to Broadway-Lafayette via the 63rd St. tunnel, and one going from Broadway-Lafayette to Grand St. and back again, endlessly.

It's a big project, one that, though it's been planned for a while, has caught a lot of people by surprise. Most New Yorkers have a ride-and-see attitude in which it's hard to plan ahead. Surprisingly trusty, they board their train without reading signs and vaguely hope that it will lead them to their usual destination. It usually does, which must reflect at least a little credit on the MTA's part. But it also means that there hasn't been much talk about or opposition to one of the most radical retractions of subway service in years.

The only group to raise much of a stink about the changes has been the Chinese immigrant population. This makes sense. In the last 10 or so years, the Chinese food markets have moved steadily eastward from the old locus at, roughly, Canal and Broadway. Right now, Grand St. and Chrystie, where the B/D/Q stopped, is where you start in assembling the ingredients for a Chinese meal. Or a Western one, really, since most people accept that, for the price, the fruits and vegetables there are about the best in the city. The markets extend to the southeast, down to the Manhattan Bridge overpass, but Grand St. is the upscale Main St. of Chinese shopping. Since trains that cross the bridge now stop at Canal St. instead of Grand St., the MTA may well shift the seat of power back to the old version of Chinatown, where Sunday shopping now consists more of car stereos and pirated Jackie Chan videos. Good for the Canal St. merchants, who will undoubtedly see more business; bad, presumably, for the Chinese diaspora that has spread out through Brooklyn, but descends on Manhattan Chinatown for weekend shopping.

However, it's hard to tell how much of an effect the subway changes will have on Chinatown. On Sunday, the first day of the changes, I rode the trains and walked around the neighborhood, as I had the previous Sunday. Foot traffic around the Grand St. station was definitely down a little. But this is a relative situation. The produce stores were doing a rapid business; there just weren't the throngs waiting behind the people being helped. I even spotted a peach seller being courteous to a patron, which I had not before seen in Chinatown. As I walked southeast, traffic picked up again, presumably due to the F-train stops at Delancey and at E. Broadway, close to the Chinese malls that have recently sprung up. When you think about it, the F really does serve Chinatown much better than the N/R/W and Q local, which officials are trying to steer people to. The only drawback of the F is that it doesn't serve Sunset Park, the largest Chinese immigrant community in Brooklyn.

This is why the new Grand St. shuttle is bound to fail and is an obvious and transparent ploy that, essentially, deceives the Chinese community. By running a shuttle from Grand St. to Broadway-Lafayette, officials maintain that they are keeping Grand St. open and vital. But since riders can only connect to the F, and not the W and Q locals, at Broadway-Lafayette, it would be much more sensible to walk the few blocks from Grand to Delancey, or to the 2nd Ave. stop, and pick up the F there. The number-one rule in riding the subway is to minimize the number of transfers you make. The Grand St. shuttle will fail on these grounds alone.

Of course, speculation is useless. People will adjust, and predictions on all sides as to the fate of Chinatown will be wrong. The real danger is the unanticipated one. When the southside Manhattan Bridge tracks were closed after the Chrystie St. extension was built in the late 1960s, it was thought that the tracks would reopen soon. On July 22, 2001, after several decades of construction on the southside tracks, a Q local made the first trip over them. The northside tracks are scheduled to reopen on an unscheduled date in 2004. I wouldn't count on it.