Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Mayor Endorses Gary Reilly's Proposal for F Express / V To Brooklyn

Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg announced a number of proposals for improving transit service (which I'll get into in more detail later).

The headline for the city-wide media is the proposal for free cross-town bus service in Manhattan (a good idea). But the big news for Brooklynites is the Mayor's belated support for enhanced F/V service on the Culver Line in Brooklyn, which I and other transit advocates have been calling for for years. From the Brooklyn Paper,
“Closer to Downtown, you’re talking about a couple of minutes. As you get farther out towards Coney Island you’re talking about potentially saving 20 minutes — that’s huge. But it’s also about the possible alleviation of crowding everywhere,” said Gary Reilly, a Democratic candidate for City Council in Carroll Gardens, who has advocated for years on behalf of the F line. “We need this and we deserve it. It’s a low–hanging piece of fruit.”


Back in 2007, over 4,300 people signed on to my petition to restore F Express service and extend the V line out to Brooklyn. Ben from Second Avenue Sagas, Jen from KensingtonBrooklyn and I have kept the pressure on the MTA and elected officials over the years to ensure that Brooklyn gets these despeerately needed transit improvements when the Culver Viaduct reconstruction is complete - and we led the fight to ensure that the Viaduct reconstruction would include the necessary track and signal work to accommodate express service.

In the summer of 2007, I held a press conference at the Church Avenue F station with Councilmen Bill deBlasio, Simcha Felder and Domenic Recchia, along with Paul Steely White from Transportation Alternatives and Gene Russianoff from the Straphanger's Campaign to demand enhanced F/V service fro Brooklyn.

In these difficult times we need to make the most of our transit infrastructure. The restoration of express/local service on the F/V to Brooklyn is a relatively cheap and efficient way to not only improve the quality of life for tens of thousands of Brooklynites, but also to aid in the revitalization of Coney Island and South Brooklyn.

Brooklyn deserves enhanced F/V service. And our time is coming.

All posts on the F/V Petition

The battle for better transit service is what inspired me to run for City Council - if you care about improving the state of our transit system, visit my campaign website at www.garyreilly.org. Our team is growing every day, and you too can help to make our city a better place to live.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

An F-express? That is a real waste of the MTA's time and money.... and there are more impactful projects that could be solved for much less effort. Could someone express what benefit an F-express would have? There is no crowding on the F-train past Church Avenue... I take the F every day, and most people exit the train by the 7th Avenue stop... and definitely by 15th Street/Prospect Park. Those living along Smith Street, and those in Park Slope, won't benefit from an F-express.

There is an easier/cheaper proposal that could be enacted today: Simply run more F-trains. Done.

Why invest in a $1billion+ capital project just to benefit the people who live farther south in Brooklyn than Church Avenue?

Anyone supporting an F-express most have corrupt ties to construction companies, or ties to the crooked developers who want to rape Coney Island, or who like to see New Yorkers get socked with higher taxes.

I am starting my own petition to shoot down this stuipid idea.

Anonymous said...

Them boys in Bayside are the most dangerous and backwards of all. The city should toughen inspections for medical, psychiatric and vehicle reasons to cut down the number of congestion. This way, we will also get the voters against congestion pricing, who live in Bayside and Staten Island, to move away. Free health care means psychiatric care for all those angry talk radio white males! They are all overweight from driving around too much, burdening the city health system!

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