G subway line set for major upgrade this summer, but requires 6-week shutdown, MTA says
NEW YORK -- G trains are getting some big upgrades this summer, but that means riders will have to deal with a shutdown.
The subway cars on G trains may be modern, but the signal system dates back to when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, according to the MTA.
"We're learning as we go and we have very much a commitment to re-signaling," said MTA Chair Janno Lieber.
Lieber and the MTA board met publicly for the first time in 2024, just months before a six-week shutdown to install CBTC, a 21st century signal system that officials say allows trains to run safer, closer together and be tracked more easily.
Transit advocates and state leaders have been speaking publicly about how the shutdown will bring similar inconveniences caused by the partial closure on the L line for emergency tunnel work in 2019.
"What we've learned from that project are two things. One is, wherever possible, try to maintain some connection service," said Lieber. "In this case, what we've also learned is that a quality bus shuttle system can work."
The MTA said shuttle bus service connecting the impacted neighborhoods will do the trick while work is being done.
New York Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who represents neighborhoods in northern Brooklyn where the shutdown is happening, said she understands "without pain, there can't be gain."
But Gallagher wants the MTA to go a step further.
"Twenty-two of us are asking for you to expand the G back to Forest Hills ... to finally let our G train be an adult and grow to 10 cars instead of the four stubby little cars that we've had all these years," she said at a joint legislative public hearing with MTA leaders in January.
It's a hefty ask. There's no official timeline on if or when that could become reality.
The six-week shutdown is expected to start in June.
