By Maia Efrem
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed cuts to Southwest Brooklyn’s B4 bus line, irking passengers who depend on the line for their primary transportation.
The MTA’s Service Reduction Report, released in January, details the cost and rationale behind the announcement to cut partial service to the B4 line. The B4, which runs down the artery of the Sheepshead Bay, Neptune Avenue and up to the Bay Ridge neighborhoods, will no longer run past Coney Island Avenue, leaving over a mile of uncovered territory.
The report claims that the shorter route will increase efficiency as well as cut costs on a line that has seen an 8 percent decrease in patronage over the last five years. With a total running cost per passenger rising to $4.16 and an average of 6,140 weekday riders, the MTA believes the cuts to the B4 line will help decrease spending.
At the monthly District 48 Community Board meeting at Kingsborough Community College, many south Brooklyn natives voiced their dissatisfaction with the coming service changes. “There will be hundreds of people who will have to walk a mile to get to their next available train or bus,” one local resident said. “This is unacceptable.”
MTA representative Aaron Donavan explained the financial crisis the company is experiencing. “We found out about the $383 million budget gap in December and announced cuts to student Metrocards,” Donavan said. “Then in January we found out about an additional $400 million deficit, which caused the service cuts, and there are more announcements and cuts to follow.”
Brooklyn native and Kingsborough Community College alumnus Anthony Catalona is angered by wave after wave of unfavorable MTA announcements. “The elimination of many bus routes that students and the elderly use, the hacking away of the G line, I have never seen the trains and buses more crowded since I could remember” and yet the MTA is losing money, said Catalona, unnerved by what he sees as poor administration.
In a video statement released on the MTA’s Web site, the agency’s chairman and chief executive, Jay Walder, said the service cuts were a means to an end in reducing the $800 million budget gap. “We have had to make tough choices to reduce our cost structure and had to look at service cuts,” Walder said. “I know that service changes are painful, we have sought every way we can to minimize the impact on our customers.”
The MTA’s cost-cutting initiatives don’t stop with service cuts. As The Brooklyn Ink reported, they will also cut the student Metrocard program, forcing more than half a million city students to pay for their own commutes. These issues will be discussed at the public hearing to take place at the Brooklyn Museum on March 3. With a continuous flood of unfavorable announcements released from the MTA, the arguments are bound to heat up a very cold winter.
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