G Love (And That Special Sprint)

The Times’ Sewell Chan advocates for the G train, the “sickly lime-green” stepchild of the subway system:

It is the only major subway line in New York that does not enter Manhattan. Its route is short: 16 stations at peak hours. Its trains, 4 cars instead of the usual 8 or 10, seem oddly truncated. Even the color of its route symbol, a sickly lime green, suggests unease.

It’s the G line, which rumbles between Queens and Brooklyn, and has never been much loved by subway riders. It does not have the multiethnic charm of the No. 7, the iPod-hipster bustle of the L, the quaint charm of the 42nd Street shuttle or the romance of the A. It has not been immortalized in song.

Chan notes that beginning this month the MTA is removing conductors (those guys who refuse to open the door as they see you running), leading some to wonder how the “G-Line Sprint” will be affected:

“Just put lights on the tracks and we can walk — it’ll be faster,” said Jonathan Lovett, 46, a letter carrier whose house is a few steps from the Clinton-Washington station in Brooklyn. His advice to the G-line neophyte: “Bring an extra battery for your MP3 player.”

But the line does provide a vital, if erratic, link between the city’s two most populous boroughs, and G detractors may be surprised to know that weekday ridership has risen 10 percent since 2000. Much of that has resulted from residential growth in neighborhoods like Long Island City, Queens, and Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Fort Greene, in Brooklyn.

Mr. Lovett was worried that the removal of conductors might complicate a practice that some riders call the G-line sprint. If they hear the train coming and find themselves at one end of the platform, they will make a mad dash to the short train. “Often, the conductor will keep the doors open if he sees you running for the train,” Mr. Lovett said. “I don’t know if the motorman will do that — or if he can even see you running, since he’s in the front of the train.”

G aficionados know that service often can be erratic; Chan digs into these charges:

The G line’s performance was defended by Emanuele Zanet, the G line superintendent at New York City Transit, the transportation authority subsidiary that operates the subways. “It operates quite efficiently, on time and on schedule,” he said.

Statistics show a mixed picture. From 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., en route schedule adherence — a measure of nighttime service reliability — improved significantly, to 80.6 percent in the third quarter of this year from 61.3 percent in the same period last year.

But from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., when most trips are taken, the wait assessment – the percentage of times that the wait between trains falls within acceptable limits – dropped slightly, to 91.6 percent from 85.9 percent. Both of the G indicators are comparable to those of most of the other 25 subway lines.

Mr. Zanet, who has overseen the line since February, attributed the slippage to signal and switch malfunctions, police actions, stops to wait for help to arrive for sick customers and other disruptions.

(Sick customer? Don’t “sick customer” me! That’s not an excuse!)

But thanks to gentrification, the G may be enjoying a higher profile in the future:

Kenneth K. Fisher, who represented most Brooklyn neighborhoods along the line as a City Council member from 1991 to 2001, said the G has long lacked powerful supporters. “It served a largely poor and working-class constituency,” he said, “and it traveled through some neighborhoods that didn’t have a lot of residents or were perceived as high-crime, which kept ridership down.”

That may be changing. Neighborhoods around the G line have been bustling with luxury high rises, art studios and new restaurants. Greenpoint has become a hub for independent filmmakers, loft condos are proliferating in Fort Greene and residential towers are going up in Long Island City.

Ridership has climbed. The G line now delivers an average of 38,869 each weekday, up from 35,227 in 2000, not counting stations south of Fulton Street that are shared with the A, C or F lines. That means more riders are learning the G-line sprint.

See also: SaveTheG.org, Station Reporter’s G Train Page.