Gentile Wants To Substitute Ferry Service For Disrupted R-Train Riders

Councilman Vincent Gentile wants to spare thousands of R train riders from having to make a hustle transfer at the Barclays Center/Atlantic Avenue station over the next year. NY 1 is reporting that Gentile is interested in providing ferry service to ease the expected congestion as the damaged R train link between Brooklyn and Manhattan gets fixed over the next 14 months.

Over 65,000 New Yorkers ride the R train, but due to damage incurred as a result of Superstorm Sandy, the tunnel connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan will be closed for 14 months starting on August 4. As a result, commuters have little option but to transfer to a different Manhattan-bound line at one of the four last stops in Brooklyn. Gentile doesn’t believe that merely transferring is a viable option considering the length of time of the service disruption and the amount of commuters affected by the change.

“It does not constitute a contingency plan just to say, ‘Transfer just before you get all the way downtown,'” Gentile told NY 1.

Instead Gentile offered the idea of using federal FEMA dollars to pay for expanded ferry service for commuters on the furthest ends of the R line, setting up a similar situation to the one after the events of 9/11.

“We’ve done it in the past, and we certainly did it in post-9/11. We can do it now,” Gentile said.

While some commuters responded to Gentile’s plan positively, believing that extra options would ease crowding and congestion as people rush to transfer to a viable line, not everyone was sold.

“I would personally just prefer to take some other kind of subway, do some kind of transfer,” said one commuter. “Ferry sounds too complicated for an everyday commute to me.”

“It’s just a lot of hassle,” said another. “You have to transfer, you have to wait for the ferry. It’s just, I don’t trust ferries.”