Subway Advisory: No Subway Service This Weekend!

We sure hope you weren’t planning a night out in the city, or perhaps a visit to Ground Zero for September 11. If so, don’t expect the MTA to cooperate with your plans: there will be no Q subway service this weekend in Southern Brooklyn.

From 10:00 p.m. tonight (Friday) to 5:00 a.m. Monday, September 12, there will be no Q trains running between Prospect Park and Stillwell Avenue. There will be shuttle buses, but we all know that’s not the most efficient or speedy service between our area and points north. Here’s the shuttle information:

• For service between Stillwell Avenue and Brighton Beach, use the B68 bus (Manhattan-bound customers should consider taking the D, F or N train from Stillwell Avenue).
• For service between Brighton Beach and Prospect Park:

• Limited shuttle bus makes all station stops between Brighton Beach and Kings Highway, then runs non-stop between Kings Highway, the Flatbush Avenue 2 station and Prospect Park.
• Local shuttle bus makes all station stops between Kings Highway and Prospect Park.

Additionally, uptown Q trains run local from Canal Street to 34th Street.

In all, this is hopefully the last blast of mass transit pain we’ll see for a while, with a nice emotional salve coming at the beginning of next week, when the express B train makes its triumphant return.

However, we’ve got raised eyebrows at the timing of this. The tenth anniversary of September 11 is an event that many New Yorkers will pay tribute to. And with so many families in Southern Brooklyn affected by the terrorist attacks – given the number of civil servants and emergency responders that hail from our area – it seems that the authority is cutting off access to larger tributes and memorials that residents may have preferred to attend.

Is this weekend shutdown a snub to locals who would’ve liked to attend larger ceremonies? Or just a poorly considered decision to complete last minute work prior to rebooting express Brighton-line service?