Results tagged “gtrain”

A 28-year old man was charged with public lewdness on October 9th after masturbating on the G train at 10:30 a.m. The Brooklyn Paper reports that cops responded to calls from horrified mid-morning commuters at the Smith-Ninth Street station, after spotting him “naked with an erect penis out on public view."

Good news for anyone sick of getting off the G at Smith and 9th Street and waiting for an F train just to go a couple more stops: Starting July 5th, the G train will continue on for five more stops into Brooklyn. The additional service is being added because of the massive Culver Viaduct Rehabiliation project, which, according to the Post, will prevent the G train from reversing itself at the next stop (Fourth Avenue). Come summer it will stop at Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street, Seventh Avenue, 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway before finally reversing course after the Church Avenue stop. This may be the best silver lining to the rehab work being done at Smith and 9th Street; last we heard the MTA plans to close the station entirely for at least nine months next year, and the entire project is expected to take 4 years. A spokesman for NYC Transit tells us, "We have said that we would look to make the [G train] terminal change permanent, as it makes sense both from a customer and operational perspective."

A fellow MTA employee who knows the 21st Street G train station very well is coming forward to defend the agent who witnessed a rape there and tells the Daily News that agents are "trained not to leave their booths for fear of a ruse, and do not have an outside line to dial 911 underground." David Chance is a 24-year MTA veteran who also worked as a station agent at the same spot where John Koort was working and called station command during the rape of Maria Besedin. Besedin went public to the media after a judge earlier in the week threw out her lawsuit against the MTA, Koort and train conductor Harmodio Cruz for their lack of effort in preventing the rape they witnessed. But Chance says Koort did everything he could, telling the News, "He would have been foolish to go out there. He immediately alerted the emergency system—that's all we are empowered to do. If it was me, unfortunately, I would have done the exact same thing."

A Queens judge has thrown out a suit against the MTA and two of its employees filed by a woman who was raped on the platform of the G train's 21st Street stop and accused onlooking transit workers of not doing enough to help her. Subway conductor Harmodio Cruz and station agent John Koort both called the command center to alert authorities of the assault in progress, but Cruz allowed his train to leave the station and Koort did not call cops directly. The judge said that the effectiveness of those extra efforts was "pure speculation." He added, "This is not the type of egregious situation that offends common sense and decency ... where they watched and did nothing." By the time cops arrived, the rapist had escaped and has not since been caught. The lawyer for the victim, an artist and an NYU student at the time of the attack, said that she was crying and devastated at the news. He told reporters, "How inept do their [transit workers] actions need to be before the courts will let a New Yorker file a case like this?"

F—and G—train riders, brace yourself in 2011. The Daily News reports that the MTA board is "expected to award a $179 million contract to rebuild the Culver Viaduct, a crumbling concrete and steel structure above local streets and the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens" today. What does this mean? Well, lots of service disruptions—and shuttle buses!—starting in 2011.

Let's face it, the G train has long been ignored by the MTA (a lot of the typos can even be found on that line), so it's not all that surprising that they've proposed to cut back its service (no more G to Queens on evenings and weekends; PDF of proposed changes). This morning the line became one of many to be eulogized at a mock funeral service (previously straphangers paid their respects to the Z train, the M and the R).

This typo was spotted over the weekend on the G train platform. Could it simply be an MTA error that has gone unnoticed, or is it the handiwork of a subway mosaic mash-up artist (if such a thing exists)? The MTA says they weren't aware of the error and told us that while they "can't imagine we've done any work there recently," they're going to look into it. Too bad people can't post comments on subway stations; the typo would have been corrected immediately.

After much speculation and the local papers preparing commuters for what was to come, the MTA made their official budget proposal today and as expected, the cutbacks were dramatic. In addition to the slashing of the W and the Z lines among other cuts listed Tuesday, today's 2009 budget also included the following:

With the MTA's budget deficit now being projected at 1.2 billion (after an original prognosis of 900 million), the Daily News has learned that a report to be released Thursday will include what some are calling "Doomsday" cuts. The big one for many commuters is the elimination of the W line.

If some faint writing on a subway seat, plus some apparently used condoms, is any indication, then someone got lucky on the G. Bitchcakes Commutes ran across this littered find on Thursday and acknowledges it could be an "elaborate display to make it appear they had sex, and quite possibly lost their virginity, on this seat of the G Train," but appreciates the effort--and is "considering never EVER sitting on a subway seat again." But we wonder if it was really an elaborate display, wouldn't they use the city's official condom? [Via New York Shitty]

A lawsuit against the MTA is about to go to trial surrounding the rape of a woman on a G train platform in Queens three years ago. And the victim, now 25, told the Daily News this weekend that she forgives her attacker ("I know he was sick in the head"), but not the token booth clerk at the 21st Street station, "I can't forgive those five seconds when I stared into his eyes, screaming for help, imploring him with my tears and all I got back was a cold stare."

Generally speaking, Gothamist isn’t moved by most of Greenpoint’s many Polish restaurants. Perhaps owing to some early scarring experiences at a fading Borsht Belt resort, we’re seldom inspired to board the G Train and make the long haul north for a plate of boiled cabbage.

Guess what? The MTA is unhappy with Siemens, who promised them real-time information boards, because the company has failed to fix its software! The Post reports that the MTA already paid Siemens $45 million out of the $160 million contract, but the agency is now looking for another contractor to finish the job. This is very good to know - you don't actually have to finish a job in order to get paid by the MTA. And Siemens claims they can fix the software, but this is apparently on deaf MTA ears (Siemens must have majorly screwed up if the MTA isn't having any of this!).

Jeff Croteau, Librarian in G-Training