MTA will run more 6 and 7 trains thanks to L train shutdown

Good news, everyone! Your frustrating commute is slated to get slightly less frustrating during the extremely maddening L train shutdown, as the MTA has announced that both the 6 and 7 trains will have added rush hour service starting in April 2019. (Sorry, everyone currently employed who relies on those trains.)

Per a press release, the 6 will get one additional round-trip train between 7 and 7:30 a.m., and another one running between 5 and 5:30 p.m. on weekdays. These increases that are in response to the Lexington Avenue line’s popularity—even though ridership on that line decreased after the Second Avenue subway opened.

Meanwhile, the 7 will get five additional round-trip trains between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m., and nine new ones between 5:30 p.m. and midnight. These additions are meant to help with what’s likely to be a massively overburdened line during the L train shutdown, since it’s also a transfer point for the E, G and M trains at Court Sq.

With any luck, the installation of the long delayed communications-based train control signaling system along the 7 will actually be finished by this fall—NYCT president Andy Byford made that promise just this week—so that the 7 can handle the extra capacity from displaced L train riders. It’s a necessary move for a line that TransitCenter’s Haley Richardson told Curbed is “hardly equipped to handle its current ridership load, much less the increase in ridership the completion of Hudson Yards will inevitably bring.”