The F/G Returns to 15th Street!

After months of shuffling through the cold to the Seventh Avenue thanks to the on the northbound 15th Street F and G trains, Slope straphangers rejoiced that service to the Bartel Prichard Square subway stop will finally be restored on Monday.

“I’m so excited,” said Corwin Smith, a Windsor Terrace resident who has been forced to walk from Windsor Place to Seventh Avenue ever since the service changes took effect in January.

“It’s a long walk from where I live to Seventh Avenue,” he said.

The suspensions to Queens and Manhattan-bound trains at 15th Street-Prospect Park are part of the on the F/G lines. The project, which also included suspensions at Fort Hamilton Parkway and Smith-9th Streets, got underway as the neighborhood was hit with weeks of heavy, bone-chilling snowfall.

At the 15th Street-Prospect Park station, straphangers were faced with a dilemma: either walk six blocks and an avenue in freezing sleet to catch the northbound F or G at Seventh Avenue, or double back to Church Avenue to catch north-bound trains.

“It’s awesome that it’s finally restored,” said Gary Smith, an employee at the Pavilion Theater. “It’s been suspended for way too long.”

Kato Hidai, a nearby resident, said he was excited because walking the extra blocks to Seventh Avenue added at least 10 minutes to his commute.

“It’s great that I won’t have to walk so far now,” he said.

Though Manhattan-bound commuters at 15th Street-Prospect Park are in the clear, the work on the Culver Viaduct is far from over.

The $275.5 million engineering and construction project will rehabilitate the elevated steel and concrete Culver Viaduct structure, which both the F and G train lines run along. The MTA has said it will also work to rehabilitate signals and switches, as well as the platforms, canopies and historic archway at the 4th Avenue-9th Street station.

The work (and therefore suspensions) is expected to progress well into 2012 – beginning at the end of this year, Brooklyn-bound service will be suspended at 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway. Beginning on June 20, the Smith-9th Street station will also be closed completely for rehabilitation through March 2012.

This weekend, in anticipation of the reopening of the Manhattan-bound 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton lines, shuttle buses will replace F trains between Jay Street-MetroTech and 18th Avenue and G trains between Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts. and Church Avenue. 

The MTA will present an update on the Culver Viaduct construction at the Community Board 6 Transportation Committee meeting at 6:30 p.m., May 19 at the Prospect Park YMCA.