Remember when the R train would go straight from Brooklyn to the Financial District instead of stranding all its riders in Downtown Brooklyn, where they’d have to grope their ways onto 2 trains and 3 trains with packed, sweaty and grumpy commuters? Yea, our answer is “We mean, we guess…” too. It’s been 13 months since the Montague Street tunnel shut down for post-Sandy repairs, and today it opened up again. But are we ready to open up again for the R train?
13 months is a long time to reassemble and reroute our lives without consistent R train service, and it’s hard to figure out what having it back really means. A lot’s changed since August 2013. Bloomberg’s gone. Bushwick’s no longer “disfavored.” There’s even a Whole Foods now. We’ve changed. We’ve grown. Is the R train really back, or is it just going to up and disappear the next time a little superstorm barrels through and floods it with millions of gallons of salt water again?
We were kind of getting used to the passive-aggressive camaraderie that comes with playing human Tetris, cramming on to those 2 and 3 trains every rush hour. Now we don’t really know where we’re going to get that with the Bay Ridge crowd gone. Welcome back R train, we guess.
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My ability to take an ill-advised nap on the way to Manhattan on a half-empty local train is back on this most blessed day.
Yet MTA s track record – Long overdue 2nd Avenue Subway , ( 7 ) train construction that really inconvenienced the weekend Queens commuters
( N ) Sea Beach Branch , where I live, without renovation considerations until now
Plus whatever damage that superstorm did to Coney Island station , who knows if that’s even shored up
Nevertheless, Impressive that MTA was under their budget and on time. Insane, almost