Bensonhurst Weekend Subway Alert: Farewell To Jay Walder Edition

The above image was not taken from a Bensonhurst subway station, as you can plainly tell by the absence of rainwater gushing through the ceiling.

I was away on vacation for over a week back in July. Yes, it was awesome. Along the way, I spent a day in London, which has an amazing subway system. Never been? You can picture it in your mind! Follow these steps:

• Think of New York’s subway system. Lots of lines, lots of connections, you can get most anywhere in the city on the subway, yes?
• Take away overnight service and triple the cost. Those are the bad parts of the London Underground.
• Now take away the peeling paint, crumbling walls, black mold, and man-sized rats.
• Also make everything else 100 times better.

I was feeling a little down about my hometown subway in the face of all this transit awesomeness, but I did not despair – MTA Chairman Jay Walder has been given an immense amount of credit for the Underground’s success when he was working with Transport for London, and I knew that he’s been working to bring his TfL innovations to the MTA.

You can imagine how not-amused I was to come home to the news that he tendered his resignation. Leaving after just two years on the job. The news came as a shock to me, but in retrospect, it really shouldn’t have. Walder is recognized as one of the top transit executives in the world, yet he’s been vehemently loathed by his employees and customers, and blamed by his bosses in the State Legislature for their own shortcomings. Also throw in the fact that he walked away from a seven-figure salary in London to take home $350,000/year from the MTA, and then heard about how overpaid he was by everyone from the transit union to the city’s billionaire mayor. Well, he’s getting a really, REALLY nice pay raise to leave it all behind. Any one of us would have done the same thing in his shoes. I don’t begrudge him for leaving, not for one minute.

But life goes on in NYC, and so does weekend subway construction. The subway disruptions for August 6-7 begin Friday night/Saturday morning at midnight and continue through Monday at 5am, unless otherwise noted.

Affected train	Weekend service disruption
	Manhattan-bound D-trains run on the N-line from Stillwell Avenue to 36th Street. For service to the affected stations (and beach-goers, I’m looking at you) (well, me), use the Manhattan-bound train to jump to New Utrecht Av/62nd St or 36th Street, then backtrack on the Coney Island-bound D-train. For service from the affected stations, use the Coney Island-bound D-train to get to either New Utrecht Avenue/62nd Street or Coney Island/Stillwell Avenue, and switch to the Manhattan-bound D-train from there.
	No disruptions in Brooklyn! (Except for that whole unpleasant business regarding the Smith-9th Street station being closed for approximately two ages of Middle Earth. No disruptions other than that.)
	No disruptions in Brooklyn! Suh-weetness!

Bensonhurst Weekend Subway Alert is a weekly look at the diversions affecting travel on the D-, F-, and N-lines through Bensonhurst and the rest of Brooklyn on the way to Manhattan. For information on diversions on other lines or beyond Brooklyn, refer to mta.info or Subway Weekender. Information is provided by the MTA and is current at the time of publication, but is subject to change.