Get ready for a commute from hell. Starting Friday, October 17, the MTA is pulling the plug on direct train service for J and M riders between Brooklyn and Manhattan for five straight weekends. If you live in Williamsburg, Bushwick, or Jamaica, you are looking at shuttle buses and massive delays instead of your usual ride into the city.
This isn’t a small glitch. It’s a full-scale disruption that leaves four major Brooklyn stations with zero train service while crews swap out ancient track equipment. The MTA says the switches haven’t been touched since 1997, but that doesn’t make the pain any less real for the thousands of New Yorkers who just want to get to work without a headache.
Five Weeks of Shuttle Bus Chaos
The MTA is forcing riders into a slog that runs through late November. Between Myrtle Avenue-Broadway in Brooklyn and Essex Street in Manhattan, shuttle buses will substitute for both trains. While J trains operate solely between Jamaica Center and Myrtle Avenue-Broadway, the direct connection to Lower Manhattan is severed.
You need to mark your calendar because this mess hits on specific dates. The commuting chaos strikes on October 17-18, October 24-25, November 7-9, November 13-16, and November 20-23. Four Brooklyn stations will lose train service due to these cuts: Flushing Avenue, Lorimer Street, Hewes Street, and Marcy Avenue. If you usually hop on at these stops, you are walking or waiting for a bus.
The MTA is telling riders to use other lines, like the L at Myrtle-Wyckoff or the A, C, or L at Broadway Junction to reach Manhattan. Some folks traveling from Jamaica might have to take the E train instead. It’s a bad sign when the agency has to tell you to abandon your line entirely just to get downtown.
Why the Tracks Need Fixing
The agency claims this pain is necessary to fix critical infrastructure that has been rotting for decades. According to reporting from the New York Post, the MTA stated on its website that “The switches were last replaced in 1997 and are critical for connecting Williamsburg, Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Ozone Park, and Jamaica in Brooklyn and Queens with Lower Manhattan.”
That 1997 date is a long time in subway years. While nobody likes delays, the fact that we are still running on equipment from the Clinton era is a failure of management. The MTA has had decades to upgrade these lines, yet now they are forcing riders to take buses because they finally got around to fixing the basics.
While the trains are down, the M is still running in Queens and parts of Brooklyn, but it won’t enter Manhattan during the affected weekends. Two sections will comprise the remaining M trains, which will operate at 20-minute intervals. One will run between Metropolitan Avenue and Myrtle-Wyckoff, with riders having to switch to another M train to continue toward Myrtle Avenue-Broadway.
A City That Can’t Run On Time
This is exactly what is wrong with how this city is run. We are paying billions in taxes and fares, yet we are stuck with 1997 technology that forces us onto unreliable buses for weeks at a time. The MTA acts like this is a surprise, but it’s the result of years of neglect and bad planning.
Meanwhile, the Mamdani administration is trying to pivot the conversation to free buses after a violent fare enforcement incident. MTA Chair Janno Lieber pushed back hard at a press conference on Thursday, saying an “unfortunate physical conflict” between a rider and inspectors “doesn’t mean you get rid of fare payment.”
Lieber tried to normalize the violence, noting that “Honestly, you know, traffic agents and customers who get parking tickets get into fights sometimes.” He added, “We don’t say that we’re not gonna have parking tickets when that happens.” That kind of logic is insulting to the working class people who just want a safe ride to their jobs.
While Lieber admits the video of officers slamming a rider to the ground had “aspects of it that were concerning,” the agency’s focus remains split. They can’t fix the switches that have been broken for 30 years, but they are ready to debate whether we should pay to ride a bus. The priority is clearly wrong.
New Yorkers are being asked to endure five weekends of hell while the agency argues about fare policy. The switches need replacing, sure, but the whole system feels like it’s falling apart. We need real solutions, not shuttle buses and excuses.
The first weekend of this disruption begins on Friday, October 17, and runs through Sunday, October 18. Riders must plan ahead or face a commute that could take twice as long as usual.
This is opinion and commentary from the RapForMayor team.
