One might think that getting from Brooklyn to Queens—or vice versa—would be easy.
For one, they’re physically connected to each other; they share the same landmass—the start of Long Island, but not technically Long Island. Secondly, they’re New York’s two biggest population centers. And finally, of the five boroughs, they’re both major drivers of population and job growth in the city right now.
But unless you own a car—which most New Yorkers do not—it’s strangely hard to get from one borough to the other. By subway, residents must seek out train lines at the ends of each borough, before backtracking. Bus routes are notoriously circuitous and slow. Both systems are a result of the spoke-hub model, designed at a time when Queens was comparatively pastoral and Brooklynites largely headed into Manhattan for work. So much so that even in 2018, it’s a common refrain in New York City mass transit that if you’re going between the two boroughs, you’re either going through Manhattan, or not going at all.
That’s what made The Great Cross-Borough Mobility Mode Challenge (that was my name for it, at least) on this steamy Tuesday morning during rush hour a bit more interesting.
Just after 8:30 a.m, seven participants simultaneously left a starting point in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and hopped onto their assigned means of transportation: subway, bus, Citi Bike, Uber, UberPool, taxi, or electric moped. Their goal? Pass this goofy made-up finish line—which had a sign, green tape, and all—outside of the Court Square Diner in Long Island City, Queens, where myself and a handful of other transit-beat reporters were waiting beneath the shadows of rapidly rising condos and subway tracks.
The race was put on by Revel, a shared electric moped company that recently premiered in north Brooklyn. The point of the stunt, beyond snagging some media attention, was to highlight the fact that traveling during rush hour between Brooklyn and Queens sucks. And it only stands to get worse once the L train goes offline for 15 months in April of 2019, dispersing hundreds of thousands of riders onto overburdened stations and roads. The big question: Which of these shared-mobility services, old and new, performs best under pressure?
And they wonder why we own cars here...
11 comments:
Try making the finish line somewhere in NE or SE Queens...
Surprise - if you want massive development you cannot rely on 1910 development.
Nitwits.
Surely the streetcars will resolve this issue..
Wow, amazing, didn't know this!
And yet our mayor who prides himself as the smartest thing since the computer chip thinks that the BQX street car fixes all of that.
MTA doesn’t care anymore. Let’s move garbage during the day. At least 50% of the escalators in the NYC subway system seem to be broken at a given time. On the L train a homeless man lit a cigarette BUT ALSO lit an incense stick (oh how thoughtful) Its gotten so bad Silvercup and Netflix are making action movies including the fights and commutes.
The city is so desperate. They are selling their MTA trash cans where people spit, piss and poop for $300. Replacing them with more affordable trash cans from the streets above. Good way of making money. Just think you can have your used 7 train trash can and used 7 train wino bench marketed as a limited edition “underground furniture” package for $650.
Perhaps that Ffffing a’O DeBlazio can create a new line ..“H” for homeless next!
Well we use the j train here to get into Brooklyn. That would probably be one of your best bets to get into Brooklyn from queens but getting anywhere past northern Brooklyn from queens is just almost impossible. And forget about taking the f train, it is like a 2 hour train ride just to get to coney island from Queens. It is terrible. Always has been, it will not change.
Extend the G over Hell Gate to Harlem and in the other direction to Wall St.
I don't know if you consider thos stops on the J Brooklyn.
The dopes need to put the Myrtle ave El back up. That service to downtown Brooklyn should El should have never been removed and needs to be rebuilt.
From Bushwick to LIC. Why not do the race from some of the underserved neighborhoods that have no subway stations? Would that not give them the results they want?
City lab gets vicious and cynical on this piece. Because this was a self-promotional stunt for the latest hipshit idea to push their moped share crap on the city, that way they could get a trial run from our stupid impressionable mayor.
As for the L train shutdown, 8 minutes to midnight...
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