‘A train’ stoppage will bring familiar headache for Rockaway locals
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Rockaway locals are worried about the planned four-month A train stoppage to the Rockaway peninsula coming next year. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
More than a decade after Hurricane Sandy flooded the Rockaway peninsula, repairs to the remote community are still causing headaches.
The repairs, while vital, have often caused further inconveniences for Rockaway locals.
This time, the MTA is making track repairs to the A train, the only subway route that travels to Rockaway. The repairs will mean the train won’t run to the southernmost portion of Queens for four months beginning in January.
The shutdown, which was announced this week, sparked immediate concern from elected officials and locals who rely on the A train to get to and from the peninsula.
Their frustration may have been made worse by the fact that Rockaway has been here before, in a precarious position between needing repairs, but also in need of continued service of the infrastructure that needs repairing.
In 2022, the city scheduled closures of large portions of Rockaway’s beaches during peak summer months when beach access is most important to the local economy dependent on beach tourism.
“This is going to be a nightmare,” Community Board 14 Chair Dolores Orr said at a meeting when the City Parks Department announced those potential closures in May of 2022.
While those closures weren’t as harmful as expected, it caused massive stress for local business owners and locals who wanted to use the beach.
Now, that situation may be repeated with the A train.
While the MTA announced the plans several months ago, the concerns began to surface last week when the MTA said that the A train would not be going to Rockaway from Jan. 17 to May 19.
According to the transit authority, the repairs will target aging infrastructure on the Rockaway line, which was heavily damaged during Sandy. The line was shuttered for seven months after the storm.
The repairs include resiliency work, such as flood irrigation, a new signal tower, structural rehabilitation and other repairs.
The work will result in a full 17-weeks without trains to the Rockaways. As an alternative, the MTA will run a shuttle bus from the Howard Beach-JFK Station toward Manhattan. The A train will continue to run across the peninsula from Beach 116th Street to the Far Rockaway station.
Despite the concern from locals, the MTA has defended the shutdown.
“This next phase of the A train resiliency work has undergone internal and external expert review to weigh alternate delivery and construction methods,” said MTA Deputy Chief Development Officer of Delivery Mark Roche. “It was determined that the plan presented is the best option for getting this work done as quickly as possible, with the least impact to commuters.”
During his weekly off-topic press conference on Monday, Mayor Eric Adams also defended the shutdowns.
The MTA will soon begin working on needed repairs on the Rockaway portion of the A train line, which will result in a four-month service shutdown to the Rockaways. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
“They don't close these stations just to be cruel or rude,” he said. “The MTA is making this call, I support the call that they're making.”
Rockaway locals – who in many ways are still recovering from the effects of Sandy – have been asking for fixes like this for years, but also said the train stoppages will be painful.
“This disruption of the shutdown – though needed – will elongate my commute by at least 25 minutes in each direction,” said Daniel Ignatius, a Rockaway local who works in Manhattan.
Local Kelly Brugess called the plans a “complete nightmare.”
“There will for sure not be enough buses,” she said. “I understand that this work needs to be done. But adding some shuttle buses as they do for some weekend fixes isn’t going to work for this.”
Local elected officials have often complained that the city doesn’t do enough outreach before making decisions that will likely impact thousands of commuters.
"The MTA should have been holding townhalls and public input sessions way before they drew up these plans,” said local Councilmember Joann Ariola. “We shouldn't be told the plans first, and then told that the public can weigh in after the fact.”
“This is classic MTA – they are simply paying lip service to the idea of public engagement, and will push through whatever plans they want regardless of what those impacted by these changes have to say,” she added.
What Ariola sees as a lack of community input before the MTA sets its plan is reminiscent of the 2022 beach closures.
“Whether it's beach closures or this train line upgrade, we see the same story playing out,” she said. “The government agencies already know what they want to do, and they are going to do what they want regardless of what the public has to say. These public input sessions after the plans are already drawn up are a facade that agencies like to use so they can pretend they're listening to the local population.”
The MTA said they have had 12 meetings regarding the project since 2023.
The conversations will also continue on the peninsula. Ariola’s Rockaway City Council neighbor, Selvena Brooks-Powers – who also chairs the council’s committee on Transportation and Infrastructure – already has a town hall planned for mid-November to discuss the A train stoppage.
“I have been working with the MTA and my partners in government to secure additional resources, investments, and support for Rockaway residents as a result of the Rockaway Line Resiliency and Rehabilitation project, and to ensure we restore full service to the Rockaway Peninsula as quickly as possible,” Brooks-Powers said in a statement to the Eagle. “Rockaway residents already intimately feel the impacts of living in an outer-borough area with scarce public transit access, and I am working to ensure we mitigate the impacts of this planned outage on our community.”
