ICYMI: Brad Lander Joins 24-Hour Subway Ride

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — City Councilman Brad Lander on Friday joined a group of elected officials who are riding the subway for 24 hours to get rider feedback about the crumbling system.

Lander got on the F at Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, then transferred to the G at Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street to meet up with upper Manhattan councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who chairs the council's Transportation Committee, and Bronx Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz.

They rode the G up to Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, where Rodriguez and Dinowitz hopped the L into Manhattan, and Lander took the G back south to his Park Slope district office.

Rodriguez and Dinowitz rode the subways for 12 hours Thursday and were completing another 12 hours Friday to case the city. Their offices were taking surveys of riders and speaking to them about their experiences riding a subway system with mounting delays and overcrowding.

"Of course, in part, it’s a gimmick, but it’s a gimmick for the purpose of organizing people to lift up the importance of the issue," Lander, who represents Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Gowanus, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Kensington, told Patch aboard the train.

"Some of this is to learn from people’s experiences to add up to some data to help us fix it. And some of it is part of organizing, getting people to feel like part of a movement that’s necessary."

Standing on subway platforms and aboard the trains, passengers vented not just about delays but hard-to-hear intercoms, dirty stations and cramped cars.

"The G does pretty well when you talk to people about reliability," Lander said. "The G train is a train that I think people feel is reasonably on time. The F is the opposite. Especially in the months of May and June, the F was unpredictable at a life-altering level."

"It was good to see that the councilmembers, especially my own, were here in a take charge kind of way to advocate and bring to light a lot of the issues that every New Yorker is concerned about," Mike Rosenbluth, a self-described "subway nerd" who lives in Kensington, told Patch. "I've been a rider forever, and there are certainly many issues we have to tackle."

Lander admitted to not riding the subway too much himself during a busy schedule with lots of obligations around the city but said his wife and kids are regular subway riders who "blow up my phone" when there are issues.

"It's a very important thing that the voices of riders are finally being heard," Lander said. "And it's been a long time coming. We're reaping, unfortunately, two decades of deferred maintenance."

Images via Marc Torrence, Patch Staff