Author: Miranda Katz / Source: WIRED
As a bartender at Mugs Alehouse, a wood-paneled tavern in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood known for its great beer list, Andrew Lynch spends many shifts chatting with customers about the impending L train shutdown.
The bar sits three blocks from the Bedford Avenue station, into which, come April 2019, no subway cars will run for 15 months as the city repairs a tunnel damaged in 2012 by Hurricane Sandy. How will Brooklynites get into Manhattan? This question has triggered a sense of looming doom across northern Brooklyn and the rest of the city. But Lynch thinks about it particularly fiercely: The bartender sunlights as a self-described “radical cartographer,” dreaming up enthralling renderings of transit systems in New York, Boston, and beyond. And he thinks he knows just the way to mitigate the shutdown.Lynch, who creates ambitious visions of a future New York City subway system, is deeply familiar with the history of the biggest metro system in the country. He knows, for instance, that before the Great Depression hit, New York City had planned to expand subway service in northern Brooklyn, and even built a massive six-track station on top of what is now the Broadway G train stop to accommodate new train lines. That station hasn’t ever been used, except for the occasional rogue art project. So, Lynch thought: Why not create a new transfer hub there, between the G, J, M, and Z lines, streamlining trips for residents coming into and out of the Williamsburg neighborhood?
Lynch argues the move could help New York move even after the work is done and the tunnel is repaired. “This isn’t just some mitigation program,” he says. “This is something that would improve connectivity all over northern Brooklyn.”
The bartender/cartographer is one of many designers, safe streets advocates, and armchair subway enthusiasts who, in the face of the impending L train shutdown, are playing around with ideas to solve transportation problems typically left to city and state agencies. Some have pitched running gondolas, pontoon bridges, or inflatable tunnels across the East River. Others have proposed wringing more utility out of the existing subway network. Still others have suggested something unprecedented, at least in the US: banning private vehicles from the streets that the L would typically cover.
Many of the fantasies for mitigating the L train shutdown will remain just that. But fantasies have also catalyzed the development of technologies like hyperloops and self-driving cars. Maybe it’s the exact sort of thinking that New…
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