More Suffocation For Area Commuters

In addition to the subway snafu making travel out of the Sheepshead Bay-area difficult, the MTA released details of bus service cuts late last week. Many of the cuts were already well-known and already facing protests from hard hit communities like Dyker Heights. But the new details reveal an increasingly strangled Sheepshead Bay community, beginning this July.

Most significant of the new bus cuts in our area is the “shortened” service of the B4, which completely removes the only bus that runs along the Sheepshead Bay waterfront and to the United Artists movie theater. Though the bus line was never great to begin with, it remains the only line Plumb Beach residents can rely on to take them laterally across Brooklyn. Now, though, all service between Coney Island Avenue and Knapp Street has been cancelled.

Other local bus lines affected include the B1, B2, B3, B9, and B31. BKSouthie.com has a good report summing up the changes across

South Brooklyn.

Just a quick thought that came to me as I wrote this: it appears almost all of the affected bus lines run east-west, lines that connected Brooklyn communities with other Brooklyn communities rather than bring commuters in the general direction of Manhattan. It almost seems as if the bureaucrats designing this mess think the desirable place to go is Manhattan, almost a total reflection of their Manhattan-centric mentality. Almost.