By Alex Christodoulides
There may be a building boom in Flushing and Long Island City, but the No. 7 subway line that links them cannot accommodate any more trains and already carries one of the borough's heavier passenger loads.
“It's really crowded all of the time. I've lived along the 7 train for about 20 years, and so to me it's always been crowded. But especially at night, I like the fact that it's crowded, because I've always felt safe on the 7 train,” said Jackson Heights resident Denise O'Shea, who rides the line to work near Grand Central Terminal.
The No. 7 line is one of Queens' express subways, along with the E, F and the J/Z's rush hour skip-stop service, but the other passenger complaint besides crowding about the so-called International Express is on-time performance.
Crowding is an issue on four of Queens' 12 subway lines, where Metropolitan Transportation Authority data show the tracks cannot hold any more trains per hour. The 7, E, F and V trains are packed to 100 percent capacity at peak times with the N, R and W lines coming close to that status.
“I have a major meeting once a month that I absolutely have to be on time for at 8 in the morning. On that day, because the 7 train is unreliable, I make sure to get on the train at 6:30 [a.m.] to go from 82nd Street to Grand Central in time,” O'Shea said. “That's absurd. I should not have to do that.”
The MTA is aware of the situation, but No. 7 line manager Lou Brusati said solutions will not happen overnight.
“There are 2,500 people on most of our trains on the 7 line,” Brusati told an audience at a forum in Jackson Heights earlier this year, adding that the trains are crowded even during nighttime hours. “The whole line is above capacity. You need another line.”
Brusati said signal upgrades currently in the works will help reduce the intervals between trains, but said he could not add any more trains to the line. Current work was expected to last through June to install signals to 111th Street, he said, but the line will require an additional four or five years of work before it is completely upgraded.
The No. 7 line is becoming Queens' development train, linking downtown Flushing to Long Island City, both of which are increasingly home to high-rises and thus a population spike.
Muss Development announced June 18 that more than 60 percent of units in the first phase of luxury project Sky View Parc in Flushing had been sold. The development, planned as 1,100 units in six towers, has as its only subway access the 7 line.
The Long Island City area, already home to high-rise luxury condo towers built in recent years, is drawing hotel developers because of its proximity to Manhattan and permissive zoning regulations.
Using data from 2006, the most recent year for which numbers were available, the No. 7 line's Main Street station gets the most fare-paying customers in Queens on an average weekday, with 56,671 passengers entering the system at that point, MTA spokesman James Anyansi said.
Census figures show that most of the borough's million-strong work force already use mass transit. According to the U.S. Census's 2003 American Community Survey, of Queens' 1 million workers, 513,949 took mass transit to work, 329,379 drove alone, 79,980 carpooled and 58,542 walked to work.
The borough's other busiest stations all reflect areas where there is already high population density and/or plans for future large-scale development, and three of the top five are along the Queens Boulevard corridor.
Anyansi said Queens' next four busiest stations were the 74th Avenue-Broadway stop in Jackson Heights, where 44,346 passengers enter to catch the E, F, R, V and No. 7 on a typical day; Jamaica Center on the E, J and Z, with 37,580; 71st Avenue/Forest Hills station in Forest Hills, where 26,334 people board the E, F, R and V; and Kew Gardens/Union Turnpike stop on the E and F lines, where 25,623 people enter the system.
Even without Mayor Bloomberg's failed congestion pricing plan, subway ridership has increased noticeably since last year, the MTA said.
In March 2008, subway ridership was 3.9 percent higher than in March 2007, Anyansi said. And comparing January 2007 to March 2007 with the same three months in 2008, there were 5.3 percent more riders, he said.
If the state had passed the congestion pricing plan, whereby on weekdays drivers would have been charged $8 to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street, the city would have received $354 million in federal funding that was slated to go toward the creation of seven new bus routes in Queens and additional buses on 13 existing Manhattan-bound routes.
The forward-looking plan drew support from many quarters, including public transit and bicycle activists Transportation Alternatives and the Straphangers Campaign.
“It would've provided money to expand and improve the system,” said Gene Russianoff, the Straphangers Campaign staff attorney. “It would create several hundred million dollars that would create new bus lines. Congestion pricing itself would feed into the development of public transportation.”
State Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Fresh Meadows) derided the MTA's plan to add buses and new routes using federal funds derived from congestion pricing as inadequate to serve the borough. However, without those funds, Queens' commuters remain sardined into the existing options.
“Queens commuters don't drive into Manhattan for the fun of it; they drive because there is no efficient, reliable mass transit option available to them,” he said in a statement before the state Legislature decided not to even vote on the plan.
One of the MTA's plan's flaws for Queens is that there are large swaths of the borough, such as Whitestone, College Point and much of southeast Queens, that have no subway service and residents must take a bus or dollar van to a train.
“In southeast Queens, there are very limited options,” Russianoff said. “But there are people who prefer to drive, and it's a lifestyle choice — we're not just talking about people in Queens Village who don't have options available to them. Studies show that for a lot of people driving, their employer reimburses for parking, or they have a placard because they're city employees.”
As it is, four of the 12 subway lines that serve Queens cannot accommodate any more trains per hour. Congestion pricing would have generated revenue to increase service on the E and F lines, the New York League of Conservation Voters said.
But history has shown that subway service can only go so far sometimes. MTA officials spoke at Queens Borough Hall last week about flooding along the Queens Boulevard subways, the borough's most vulnerable corridor during a storm, like the deluge in August 2007 that paralyzed mass transit throughout the city.
“From 6 a.m. onward [on Aug. 8, 2007], we experienced unprecedented disruptions on 19 major segments” of the subways, said Stephen Petrillo of the New York City Transit Capital Program Management Department. The disruptions stranded millions of commuters citywide, especially on the underground lines.
Petrillo identified the borough's three most flood-prone stations as the Parsons Boulevard-Hillside Avenue F train station, and the 65th and 36th street stations on the G, R and V lines — all of which lie along or feed into the Queens Boulevard trunk. Those stations are among 10 throughout the five boroughs that the MTA identified as the most likely to flood.
But commuters struggling to get to work do not necessarily have it any easier when the weather is dry.
MTA figures published last summer in The New York Times show that among the lines that serve Queens, four lines cannot handle any more trains per hour. The No. 7, E, F and V lines are at 100 percent track capacity, the data showed. Also, the N, R and W were at 89 percent track capacity; the J, M and Z at 72 percent; the A and C have the least-clogged tracks, at 68 and 46 percent, respectively. The G train, which runs through Brooklyn and terminates at Court Square in Long Island City, is at 82 percent.
The passenger load on Queens' subway lines, too, is quite high, according to those data. The E train is at 100 percent capacity, the only one in the borough to be so crowded. The L train, which joins the A, C, J and Z at Broadway Junction in Brooklyn, is running at 103 percent. In descending percentages, the most packed trains in Queens are the N and W at 86 percent, the C at 85 percent, the No. 7 and A at 83 percent, the F at 79 percent, the R at 63 percent, the M at 62 percent, the J and Z at 61 percent and the V at 50 percent rider capacity.
Rusianoff's feeling is that riders who can avoid those peak periods would benefit.
“The No. 7, E and F are at capacity during rush hour, and not other periods. It is my feeling that the Transit Authority provides sufficient trains at other times to accommodate riders,” Russianoff said. “Some employers offer flextime, or employees could work off-hours” to avoid the worst of the crunch.
But many in the workforce do not have those options. If congestion pricing had passed, it is not clear where the drivers forced out of their cars would have squeezed in on some subway lines.
Reach reporter Alex Christodoulides by e-mail at achristodoulides@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
