Photo: The MTA announced last week that it plans to increase scheduled service on four subway lines across the city in December, including on the 7 Train and the M in Queens. File Photo.
Citing increased demand across the five boroughs, Metropolitan Transportation Authority New York City Transit last week announced that it plans to increase scheduled service on the 2, 7, L and M lines in December.
Almost all of the additional service will be scheduled during off-peak hours, which showed the highest growth last year as the subway moved more than 1.75 billion customers, the highest ridership in over 65 years, according to MTA NYC Transit.
The most significant increase, according to the agency, will be seven new weekday round trips between 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. on the L line, which experienced the greatest ridership growth at all hours in 2014. The new service will reduce the average time between trains to 5 minutes for the entire period between the morning and evening rush hours. NYC Transit last added service on the L line in fall 2014 with 56 more weekend round trips and an increase in weekday evening service.
The 7 line will see two additional new round trips on weeknights between 8 p.m. and 10:20 p.m., reducing the average time between trains to under 4.5 minutes. The 2 line will also add two new weeknight round trips between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., reducing the average time between trains to 7.5 minutes. The M line will add one round trip on weekdays, reducing the average time between trains to 7.5 minutes between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.
In Queens, where the 7 line is a major transportation option for residents in rapidly growing neighborhoods such as Long Island City, Woodside, Sunnyside and Flushing, overall ridership grew by 1.9 percent, according to agency numbers. The Flushing-Main St. 7 terminal moved more than 60,000 customers on an average weekday, more than the combined transit hub for Chambers St AC, World Trade Center E and Park Place 23 stations that serve major tourist destinations and the Financial District.
According to the MTA, schedule changes on the 2 and M lines also reflect the city’s overall population growth and significant commercial development in the downtown and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn and in Long Island City, Queens.
Implementation of the changes will cost approximately $1.6 million annually, an MTA spokesman said.
The extra service plan arrived just days before the MTA announced that ridership increased again in 2014 on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad, making them respectively the busiest and second-busiest passenger railroads in the country.
The LIRR reported a year-end total of 85.86 million passengers in 2014, a 3 percent increase over the prior year. It is the third-highest ridership since 1949 and highest since the modern record in 2008.
Metro-North carried 84.66 million passengers in 2014, a 1.5 percent increase over the prior year and the highest ridership in Metro-North’s history. Metro-North ridership has grown 77 percent over the past 30 years.
“In another era, young people would buy a car with their first paycheck. Now, with access to the nation’s most vibrant public transit system, more of them are buying train passes and MetroCards,” said MTA Chairman and CEO Thomas Prendergast. “Across our region, New Yorkers are developing a mindset that riding the railroad isn’t just about going to work anymore. It’s becoming more and more integrated into the fabric of daily life.”
By Michael V. Cusenza michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
