With its two cars, single track and four stops, the Franklin Avenue shuttle in Brooklyn looks less like a part of the New York City subway system than a way to get around Mister Rogers’s neighborhood.
It is indeed a beautiful day in the neighborhood for the little shuttle. On Monday, it was named the most punctual train in the subway system by New York City Transit. In the 12 months that ended in May, the shuttle arrived at its stations on time an average of 99.7 percent of the time, according to transit figures. By comparison, major lines like the No. 4 train were on time only 79.7 percent.
The shuttle has come a long way since the 1990s, when it was known as the “ghost train.” A fifth stop was closed, and the train, once eight cars long, shrunk to two. The one and a quarter-mile line, which predated the subway system as part of an existing train line, has been threatened with elimination in years of budget cuts, but has managed to ride them out. Rebuilt at a cost of $74 million in 1999, the shuttle averages 20,000 riders per day.
To be fair: The criteria for “on time” was a train’s arrival at a terminal within five minutes of its scheduled time, and the entire trip on the shuttle lasts seven minutes.
“It’s hard to mess this one up,” said a train operator who gave only his first name, Lee. But he could talk only while he walked, and not for long, for there is little downtime on the Franklin Avenue shuttle, which is not as simple as it looks.
In truth, the shuttle is a seven-minute minuet between two trains. The ride begins every 10 minutes, “on the ones,” Lee said, meaning that during daytime hours, a train leaves the first stop, Franklin Avenue, while another leaves the last stop, Prospect Park, at one minute past the hour and every 10 minutes thereafter.
The trains approach each other like the trains in a high school math exam: If Train A is traveling X miles per hour and Train B is traveling Y miles per hour, when will they meet? In the shuttle’s case, with two trains sharing one track for most of the trip, there is only one answer: the Botanic Garden stop, where the track splits briefly into two, allowing the trains to pass each other. Often, the Franklin Avenue-bound train arrives first, as it is only one stop away.
Sure enough: “We’re being held by the dispatcher,” said an unusually cheerful announcement on that train on Tuesday morning. The announcer, it turned out, was training on the shuttle to work on one of the several subway lines with no conductor onboard, and just a train operator.
It is a busy one-person job. After the last stop, the operator leaves the booth and walks the length of the train, often stopped by passengers with questions. The operator then enters the booth at the other end of the train, and, at the next minute ending in a one, is off again.
The trip lasts an average of seven minutes. A third train is kept in reserve on an unused track, in case one of the other two trains is pulled from service.
In the city of dark tunnels and crowded trains, the shuttle is quite pleasant. Regular riders said it was never very crowded. And the views are downright pastoral by New York standards. On the path toward Prospect Park from Bedford-Stuyvesant, automobile garages and repair shops give way to stone walls and trees that gently brush the sides of the shuttle.
“People have described it as going through their own private garden,” another train operator said. School groups come and go, filling the train with the shouts of happy children.
The train that left Franklin Avenue at 11:11 a.m. arrived at Prospect Park at 11:18. Right on time.
There are occasional delays. “People get sick,” Lee said. “Track fires. A branch falls across the track.” He said he filled in only occasionally on the shuttle and was defensive about the criticism of the No. 4 train this week.
“It’s really not fair for people to do that to the 4 train,” he said. “It’s the only train on the East Side. There are so many people, of course it’s not going to be on time.”
For the most fortunate of riders, the shuttle is a quick trip from home to the park. But for most, it is a third train in an already-long commute, connecting them from, say, the B line to the 2, 3, 4, 5 or C trains, many of which showed decreases in their on-time arrivals. For these riders, the shuttle is often a brief respite before bad news with the next train. (The 42nd Street shuttle, which serves only two stations and presumably enjoys a 100 percent on-time record, is not included in the annual transit figures.)
“It gets you to your point quick,” said Von Blakely, while boarding the Franklin Avenue shuttle with his 2-year-old son, Davon, who was howling in his stroller.
“It’s not crowded,” said Karen McCoy, 42, a nursing assistant. “That’s the main thing. And it gets me where I’m going very fast.”
A 17-year-old passenger, Avianca Lockwood, was about to give up on friends she had been waiting for in the Botanic Garden station, and was waiting for the shuttle, due any minute. She thought about the ride ahead and said something unheard in most subway stations:
“It’s pretty.”
An article on July 24 about the Franklin Avenue shuttle in Brooklyn, named the most punctual train in the subway system by New York City Transit, misstated its ridership. It averages 20,000 riders per day, not per week.
