MTA Recommends F Train Express Service Between Downtown Brooklyn and Kensington

• Photo by m01229/Flickr

BROOKLYN, NY — Beginning next year, the MTA is recommending that half of central Brooklyn's F Trains run on the express track during peak service periods in the morning and evening.

The express trains would run between the Jay Street-MetroTech station in Downtown Brooklyn and the Church Avenue station in Kensington, with one stop at the 7th Avenue station in Park Slope.

The other half of F Trains would continue making local stops between Church and Jay. If implemented, the change would go into effect by the fall of 2017.

The recommendation was presented in a feasibility study issued this week by the MTA, and done "at the request of F riders and elected officials in Brooklyn," according to the agency.

The study concludes that express passengers would save 3.4 minutes on their commute, while local passengers would lose 1.3 minutes, producing a "net travel time benefit of 27,000 minutes."

"F express trains would be slightly more crowded than current F trains," the MTA said, "although still within NYC Transit's loading guidelines, while the F locals would be less crowded. There would also be increased stair crowding at a couple of local stations due to larger PM exit surges per train."

However, the MTA found that additional service on the F Train couldn't be put in place, in part due to the technical limitations of the subway system.

"Should an express be implemented," the agency wrote in an summary of its work, "local stations between Church Av and Jay St-MetroTech would have 50% less peak F service."

MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said Tuesday that the findings are "just the start of a process where we're going to engage all the communities that would be impacted by a service change."

Ortiz said the MTA will begin conducting community meetings on the proposal as soon as it can, adding that any service change must be approved by the MTA board.

That promised dialogue began on Tuesday, with Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams criticizing the findings in a statement.

"The MTA’s newly announced proposal, which was made outside of consultation with local representatives and impacted straphangers, seeks to pit Brooklynite against Brooklynite in a fight for quality transportation," Adams said.

“It is time for the MTA to come to the table with stakeholders along the F line and devise a comprehensive community vision for the restoration of express service," he said — "one that protects the interests of commuters who rely on local service as well."

A joint statement issued late Tuesday by a group of New York elected officials — including City Councilmembers Brad Lander, whose district includes Kensington, Windsor Terrace and Park Slope, and Stephen Levin, whose district includes Downtown Brooklyn — was equally critical.

"The proposed service change harms more people than it helps, ignores our request for increased service, and [creates] ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ without sufficient information or dialogue," the statement read.

"We made clear from the start that we could only support an F-Express if overall service was increased on the F line and riders at local stops were not harmed," it continued, calling for "increased and improved F service" as well as "a better process from the MTA going forward."

(Editor's note: a previous version of this story mentioned "falling demand" along the F train. This was an error. Brooklyn's northern population is expected to grow faster than in the southern half of the borough, but the south will grow as well. Page 18 of the MTA's study shows projected population increases through 2035.)