The A and C Trains in Brooklyn

Today’s focus will be on the Blue Letter Lines in Brooklyn, the A and C train that is. The C is the A’s local train which I explained in another blog as the train that stops at local stations or more frequently than the express train in the pair.  The A/C trains come into Brooklyn near the Federal Courthouse at High Street briefly maneuvering through the Borough Hall and Fulton Street Mall area before going onto Fulton Street which it rides out to Broadway Junction. After Broadway Junction, the train goes on Pitkin Avenue before entering Queens. Broadway Junction is Northern Brooklyn’s most important subway station for reasons that I shall devote a whole blog to but it is noteworthy that the A train is probably historically the most influential of the Broadway Junction bound trains for reasons I shall explain below. In the beginning of the commute across Brooklyn, the A/C trains offer connections to the F. G. and R trains in the Downtown area. Connection wise, there is one slight advantage to taking the C train over the A train. That advantage is a connecting Shuttle Subway located at the Franklin Avenue station which can connect a rider to the Atlantic Terminal bound B/Q and 2/3/4/5 trains located south of Fulton Street . At Broadway Junction, the A/C trains connect to the L train and J/Z trains. Overall the A/C trains in Brooklyn are the shortest segment of their lines both time and distance wise making the ride across more efficient than other such subway lines in the borough. The C train end near the Queens border while the A train continues into Queens. Throughout the entire travel in Brooklyn, the A and C trains are both below ground so one who is riding must exit the train to see the area at large.

Across Brooklyn, the A/C trains link the neighborhoods of DUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn, Fulton Street Mall, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and East New York. Before the Fulton Street Mall, the area is primarily an urban business and commercial center for Brooklyn with several government and administrative centers as well. The neighborhoods served after the Fulton Street mall are primarily of Brownstone residential buildings, commercial areas along Fulton street with some mixed industrial/commercial usage in areas closer to Atlantic Avenue and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There are some public housing units along the subway line as well particularly in Eastern Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York which is after Broadway Junction but before the Queens border. The ride along the A train in Brooklyn involves a total of 8 stops while the ride along the C train involves a total of 16 stops. The A and C trains run parallel in this area to the LIRR CTZ Brooklyn line which goes to Jamaica Center. The A and C themselves do not go to Jamaica Center but do offer the only AirTrain connection at a subway station not at Jamaica Center when they cross into Queens.

Up to the Fulton Street Mall, the area served is a part of greater Downtown Brooklyn, from Fort Greene onward the area served is part of greater Bedford Stuyvesant. While the greater Downtown Brooklyn area is influenced by many other trains particularly those going to Atlantic Terminal, the A/C trains themselves have greatly influenced the population pattern in greater Bedford-Stuyvesant. When I read the biography on rapper Notorious BIG Rest In Peace (who notably referred to the area illustrated in the song Unbelievable with the lyrics “Live from Bedford-Stuyvesant Son the Livest One…), the completion of the A train in the 1930s helped bridge the communities of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The connection between the two communities helped Bedford-Stuyvesant become a center for Brooklyn’s African American population. The exact boundaries of Bedford-Stuyvesant have over the years varied, at one point it was labeled like Harlem as the area wherever African Americans resided. I personally take the boundary to be everything above Atlantic Avenue below Broadway, west of Broadway Junction, and east of the G train and Atlantic Terminal but my own boundaries could be off especially at the Southern and Western boundaries.

The entire region covered by the A/C trains over the years, greater Downtown Brooklyn included, greater Bedford-Stuyvesant in particular have historically been a troubled section of Brooklyn. I mention this because the area traversed is one that often intimidates people not from New York and some people from New York. From what I read about Robert F. Kennedy’s (who with his brother John were two of the finest politicians of their time) tenure as the US Senator of New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant was a neighborhood used for illustrating the poverty in throughout urban America. RFK specifically looked at Bedford-Stuyvesant to see how to solve problems in the Northern ghettoes of America at a time when much of the civil rights activism and focus was on the Southern US. From what I read, Bedford-Stuyvesant used to be as it was portrayed in the French Connection, it used to comprise blocks of burnt out housing, seedy bars, open air drug markets, prostitution, con artists, broken down cars, and families that were either chronically unemployed or on welfare. While the area still needs improvement, evidence of Senator Kennedy’s improvement attempts has continued on to this day in the area along the A and C train at least. There are fewer cheap liquor establishments, there is little evidence of open air drug markets or other illegal vices being done publicly (if anything exists, it likely does so behind doors), there is little evidence of neglect or abandonment, most of the once troubled residential units are either being or have been rebuilt, and the classic “BedStuy: Do or Die” mentality is slowly evolving into what locals have reclaimed as “BedStuy and Proud of it.” Overall people are attracted to much of the area now as there are less expensive properties and closer proximity to Downtown Brooklyn, the BQE, Manhattan and Queens.

The area as a whole feels more rebuilt as it gets closer to Manhattan on the subway line. Urban problems still exist but not at the hyperbole that many non-residents have associated with this section of Brooklyn. However, my mentality is somewhat conditioned to say the least, my standard of urban poverty is Baltimore, Maryland, so my view may be in a different perspective than other riders who may not be completely comfortable exiting the trains in this area. I say all this to put a subway rider in the context of riding through here, contrary to what a non-resident rider who has heard about the area may think, they will not walk into a third world warzone if they get off the A or C train in Brooklyn. The A and C trains are good trains to ride and the area around them plays just as much of a role in defining Brooklyn as does the area around the D train in Southwest Brooklyn. The A and C trains are more useful than the J and Z or L trains that go to Broadway Junction simply because they are more direct, they are easier to track both East and West of the Junction, and they are more within walking distance of the Atlantic Terminal bound trains, specifically the Red and Green Numbered Lines. As the A and C trains can also take one to the outer regions of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens and Washington Heights in Manhattan, they can provide a continued journey that other subway lines can not possibly take directly from Brooklyn.