series of weeks-long shutdowns<\/a> two summers ago.<\/p>\nThe MTA shut down service on several weekends in May, June and July, and for another one earlier in August \u2014 and there\u2019s a shutdown slated for this upcoming weekend.<\/p>\n
Business owners say the summer closures have already seriously hurt their bottom lines.<\/p>\n
One business owner decided to do a survey of small businesses, and said that nine out of 10 of those surveyed lost business, and average sales went down about 20% each time there was a weekend shutdown.<\/p>\n
During the shutdowns, shuttle buses replace the G train between Bedford-Nostrand Avenues and Court Square.<\/p>\n
The shutdowns come as the MTA continues to modernize signals \u2014 and repair damage to the tunnel under Newtown Creek that was discovered during the signal modernization project.<\/p>\n
The MTA also has G train shutdowns planned for this coming December. Businesses were told those would happen on three consecutive weekends that month, at the peak of holiday shopping.<\/p>\n
Local elected officials and business owners held a rally Thursday morning calling on the MTA to reschedule them.<\/p>\n
“When we are in a transit desert, where we only have one train, it is imperative that the MTA work with our community,\u201d one rally attendee said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sometimes sit there and wonder, we\u2019re so much busier usually today. Why is Saturday slower? And then we realize the G train is obviously shut down,\u201d another attendee added.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez said her office was \u201curging the MTA to move their December dates to another time, to January.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we know that December is another set of peak weekends for these small businesses,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the MTA said it values customers and Greenpoint residents, but added that the work along the G train line is needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur team is providing robust alternative service and actively working with local elected officials to mitigate disruption and impact of temporary but necessary service changes,\u201d Bill Amarosa Jr., the executive vice president of subways at New York City Transit, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Business owners, however, say they feel the MTA isn\u2019t listening to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Business owners in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn are calling on the MTA to make changes to ongoing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[25,1084,297,98,100,99,9,24,12,63,298,27,2023,296,142],"class_list":["post-326117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-app-top-stories","tag-app-traffic-transit","tag-app-traffic-and-transit","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-samantha-liebman","tag-top-stories","tag-traffic","tag-traffic-and-transit","tag-transit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}