MTA Plans To Bring Back W Train Subway Service
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said Friday that it plans to offer a warm welcome back to the discontinued W Train.
The subway service, which has not been seen since 2010, could return as early as this fall, the MTA said.
The return of the W Train is part of a bigger plan to help get the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway up and running.
The proposed service changes would return the W Train to its former route from Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan to Astoria, Queens, where it will operate local service into Manhattan. It will not run on weekends or overnight.
The new W Line will replace Q subway service in Queens, because the Q will instead run on the Second Avenue line.
The Q will stop at new stations along Second Avenue at 96th, 86th and 72nd streets, Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street, 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, and all the express stations where it now stops on the Broadway Line in Manhattan. Service on the Q Train in Brooklyn will remain the same, the MTA said.
The W Train went into service in 2001, originally running from Astoria to Coney Island, Brooklyn, and then in 2004 switching to a route from Astoria to Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan, according to published reports.
In 2010, the W Train was eliminated, along with the V Train that ran from Forest Hills, Queens to the Second Avenue stop in the East Village, as part of MTA budget cuts, according to published reports.