After a four-year renovation project, N train service in Brooklyn is fully restored
Photo via Wiki Commons
The average New Yorker’s biggest MTA gripe is delays at their station, but imagine having no station at all for two years? That’s what residents in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn have endured. Beginning in July 2017, seven Coney Island-bound N train stations, starting at Fort Hamilton Parkway in Borough Park and stretching to 86th Street in Gravesend, were closed as part of the Sea Beach Line restoration project. After a sixth-month delay, the final phase is now complete, with four stations in Bensonhurst finally reopening, reports The City.
The $395.7 million Sea Beach Line project began in January 2016, when nine Manhattan-bound N train stations were closed for repairs as part of the MTA’s larger 2010-2014 Capital Program. They reopened in May of the following year, after which work began on the Coney Island-bound platforms. Only seven stations were affected this time–Fort Hamilton Parkway, New Utrecht Avenue, 18th Avenue, 20th Avenue, Kings Highway, Avenue U, and 86th Street–since the Eighth Avenue and Bay Parkway stations provided south-bound service via a temporary platform on the middle track.
The Sea Beach Line was over 100 years old and was notoriously decrepit. The nine affected stations serviced more than 50,000 new yorkers on the average weekday. Renovations included new staircases, lighting, and paint; artwork/mosaics at each station; better safety features and communication systems; and general repairs to walls and platform canopies. Why the sixth-month delay? According to The City, the MTA blamed “the ‘advanced deterioration’ of structural steel that was discovered once the work had begun.”
[Via The City]
RELATED:
