Late night commuters in Bay Ridge will soon have a one-seat subway ride into Manhattan.
The MTA announced Thursday that it’s planning to extend R train service from Bay Ridge to Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan from midnight to 6 a.m.
The move will add redundancy in the MTA network, providing an alternative to the N and D trains in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, Greenwood Heights, Park Slope, Gowanus, Boerum Hill and Brooklyn Heights neighborhoods.
“We always want to better serve our customers by strengthening service whenever we have sustainable resources to do so,” said MTA New York City Transit President Veronique Hakim in a statement. “This added service will provide off-peak customers with additional travel options and add seamless connectivity to vital transit hubs in Brooklyn.”
The extension will launch in the fall, requiring the employment of two additional R trains, according to MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz.
Currently, there are about 1,900 late night riders who use the MTA’s R train shuttle from Sunset Park to Bay Ridge, between the 95th Street and 36th Street stations.
Almost all of those riders, about 1,800, currently transfer to either the N or the D to get to their destinations.
“I think it’s a great thing for R train riders,” said MTA Board Member Andrew Albert. “This restores a one seat ride for a lot of folks.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that 19,000 late night riders use the MTA’s R train shuttle from Sunset Park to Bay Ridge and that 18,000 riders transfer to the N or D trains.
