Cheryl Motley, 62, rises at around 5 a.m. every weekday to make her two-hour commute from Far Rockaway, Queens to her office in Brooklyn on the A then R train. Come the new year, though, she will have to wake up even earlier as an upcoming service outage to the A train is set to shake up her routine.
Starting in mid-January, service for the A train will end at Howard Beach for 17 weeks until May — disconnecting over 9,000 daily commuters on Broad Channel and the entire Rockaway peninsula from the only subway service that carries them to the mainland.
“Oh my god, it’s devastating,” Motley, a 30-year Rockaway resident, told THE CITY while riding the Rockaway-bound A train home from work during rush hour Thursday. She recalled when Superstorm Sandy cut off train services for more than six months in 2012, forcing her to rush to the bus every morning to connect to a train.
“It seems like it’s gonna happen again. And they’re doing it in the cold weather. It’s like, you have to wait outside — it’s cold now.”
The shutdown comes as the MTA continues its decade-long and sometimes delayed efforts to rehabilitate the Rockaway line after Superstorm Sandy wreaked extensive damages to its infrastructure.
The current phase of the project — a $393 million endeavor that began in December 2022 and is expected to be completed in fall 2026 — is meant to overhaul and upgrade components of the line that are more than 65 years old to make them more resilient to climate change and rising sea levels, said MTA construction and development senior director Deirdre Harvey at a town hall hosted at the Rockaway YMCA Thursday night.
The transit authority will be making repairs to the concrete shell that encases the viaduct stretching from one end of the Rockaways to the other, Harvey said, and completely demolishing and rebuilding the Hammels Wye Viaduct where east- and west-bound trains part ways as they enter the peninsula. It will also be fortifying low-lying embankments that support the track beds atop and constructing a new elevated signal tower to make sure that trains can continue to run in the case of another storm surge.
Meanwhile, general superintendent Hugo Zamora, who will be overseeing customer service during the A train shutdown, as he did earlier this summer for the G train, explained that the MTA will be offering two free shuttle bus services to Howard Beach and rerouting the shuttle train to run across all stops on the peninsula for free.
“I will be here everyday to make sure you get to your destination as quickly as possible,” Zamora said, attempting to assure local residents. “My job is to keep traffic moving.”
Many Rockaway residents at the town hall, however, said they are concerned and frustrated about the upcoming change. Tensions were palpable as Allan Foster, acting director of rail network and planning, explained that the MTA did not have extra buses to increase express bus service to Manhattan during the scheduled outage, except for a few that will be on standby in the case of crowding issues.
“Woo, Lord have mercy,” one local said. Another one shouted: “That’s not good enough. It’s gotta be free. It’s gotta be free!”
One question card submitted and read aloud said, “The MTA has a lot of nerve announcing an outage days after closing their customer survey. Why are Far Rockaway riders always inconvenienced?”
Another read: “Why are these repairs only being done 12 years later?”
A number of others also expressed concerns about whether the MTA will be able to complete the work on time.
“We do have a large penalty on the contractor if he runs late, and we’ll always remain humble before Mother Nature, as she can have an effect on this as well,” Harvey said. “We’ve been working very diligently to finish within a 17-week outage and prior to the beach season.”
“Beach season?” Several locals in the crowd responded in ridicule, while others murmured.
Quiana Davis, a Rockaway resident of 15 years, said she had heard about the town hall from a Facebook group where many locals have been venting about the upcoming service change. She said she was concerned about waiting for the bus in the cold and getting to work on time, but that she also understood the need for the resiliency work, especially after witnessing how Sandy had devastated the peninsula and interrupted train services there.
“It was challenging at that time, and when this came, I said ‘No, not again.’”
‘I Just Want to Take This Train’
Outside the town hall, several A train commuters traveling home during rush hour said they were concerned about the way service outages could dramatically affect their daily routines throughout the winter and spring.
As the A train crossed into Broad Channel, ninth-grader Mickaela Douglass told THE CITY she relies on the A train five days a week to take her to the 7 train at Times Square to get to school. And while Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announced that the Long Island Railroad fares would be discounted to $2.75 at the Far Rockaway station during the scheduled changes, Douglass said it would be of no help to her, as she relies on the student OMNY card to get to class for free so she can set aside money for lunch.
“I’ve been searching for other ways I can get to places. But I don’t know if I could take a bus or whatever to get to my school. I just want to take this train because it’s closest to my house,” Douglass, 13, said, adding that she was a bit concerned about safety while navigating a new route to school during the winter. “And since it’s gonna be daylight savings, it’s gonna be really dark.”
At the Beach 67th Street train platform, a 21-year-old college student who asked not to be named said she was “mad” about the upcoming shutdown, but that it was better than the never-ending weekend work over the past few years.
“It’s usually a hell-ish commute when the A shuts down. Because you have no say in it and you just kind of have to deal with it. And now that I’m looking for a job, it’s changed where I can look for a job,” she said. “But I’m also really annoyed by it because I’ve been here since Superstorm Sandy. And how long ago was that, that this still couldn’t be done?”
Maria Rodriguez, who typically wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to get to work at Greenwich Village, said she now plans on moving out of the Rockaways altogether after hearing about the service changes last week.
“They’re promising the buses — but in the middle of winter. I know they’re not gonna come every two minutes, and we’re by the water — it’s freezing,” Rodriguez said. “I’m moving, I’m moving. That’s it, I’m done. I’m just tired of it.
“I’m just looking anywhere where I don’t have to deal with the A train.”
