For years now residents of North Brooklyn have been dealing with L Hell, in which L train service is either cut entirely or severely reduced over the weekends. Apparently restaurant and bar owners only recently noticed. Yesterday a group of them met with Brooklyn State Senator Daniel Squadron to bitch about how it is hurting their business. Not that there is anything that can be done!
"We took about an 80 percent hit," Dave Rosen, owner of Masten Lake, reportedly moaned. "For a 3-month-old business, it’s impossible to swallow that." But swallow it he has, and will continue to, because the shutdowns aren't over—yet.
The major issue is that the L is just too popular. The line needs more trains running at all times and that means work has to be done on the century-old signaling system, which, according to the MTA requires at least 50 consecutive work hours to do—hence the shutdowns. [Insert rant about how this is why the express lines on most of the NYCT system are genius and why it is going to bite the MTA in no time at all that they are building the Second Avenue Subway without an express line]
Luckily, the worst of it is almost over. There are only two more scheduled weekend outages this year, the weekends of Feb. 25-27 and March 3-5.
As for the business owners in Williamsburg proper like Rosen who feel they've been shafted by the MTA—we have little sympathy. First off, it could be much worse. At least most Williamsburg businesses haven't been completely shut off from service like others in the borough (most of the time the shutoffs now end at Lorimer). Secondly, if you went and opened a business that depends on mass transit for its clientele and didn't do the legwork to find out that said mass transit is regularly messed with, well... you won't make that mistake again.
