Broadway Junction

This posting is dedicated to Broadway Junction, the largest subway station in Northern Brooklyn and the second largest in the borough after Atlantic Terminal. It is located at a major crossroads of Brooklyn near Atlantic Avenue, Broadway itself, the Jackie Robinson Interborough Parkway, and the Queens Borough. Five trains stop at Broadway Junction, two from the Blue Letter Lines, the two Brown Letter Lines, and the single Silver Letter Line in addition to a Long Island Railroad stop located south of the Junction, and a number of buses, many of which work between both Brooklyn and Queens. Broadway Junction is located between the neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, East New York, Brownsville, and the cemeteries located on the Brooklyn/Queens border.

As I mentioned in the posting regarding Atlantic Terminal, I classify the trains in Brooklyn as either Atlantic Terminal bound or Broadway Junction bound for the most part. This is because there are no trains that go between the two major stations connecting them and in only a few Downtown Brooklyn subway stations the Broadway Junction bound and Atlantic Terminal bound trains can meet at the same stations. This means that if one wants to transfer between a train in Brooklyn that heads to Atlantic Terminal from a train that heads to Broadway Junction, it pretty much cannot be done. As Broadway Junction serves five of the seven non-Atlantic Terminal bound trains in Brooklyn, it is thereby the next major station in the borough. As the Atlantic Terminal trains provide no use to any trains in Northern Brooklyn, Broadway Junction is thereby Northern Brooklyn’s most important subway station.

Broadway Junction is a large but simple subway station. The Blue Letter Line trains, the A and C stop below ground while the Brown Letter Lines the J and Z and the Silver Letter Line L stop above ground. To get from the below ground A and C trains to the elevated trains, one must take a long escalator as videotaped above. To differentiate between the Blue Letter lines its simple, there are four tracks, the two northern most ones go to Manhattan, the two southern ones go to Queens, the outermost tracks are for the local C trains while the innermost tracks are for the express A trains. When differentiating between the J/Z and L trains, its also simple, the J and Z trains are on the lower tracks while the L trains are on the upper most track. If you are waiting for a J train and you cannot see another train above you but rather see it below you, you are waiting on the wrong platform, you are waiting on the L train platform. Also the J/Z train platform has three tracks while the L train platform has two. The J/Z platform functions as such, the Z train when it runs (which I’ll explain in my blog devoted to them) will stop on the middle track only which is an express track.

South of Broadway Junction is the East New York LIRR train station, one stop from that to Jamaica allows a traveler to get on the AirTrain to JFK international airport. There are other ways to access JFK from Broadway Junction as well, one can take the J/Z trains that terminate at Jamaica Center and one can take a Far Rockaway bound A train to the Howard Beach station in Queens to get to JFK. Because three of the five subway trains at Broadway Junction, a nearby LIRR stop, and a likely city bus traversing Brooklyn and Queens offer connections to the AirTrain, Broadway Junction is one of the better subway stations for access to the airport exemplifying Broadway Junction’s purpose as a major subway station in Brooklyn. Broadway Junction being located near the Queens border could if properly configured also allow for bus service connections to LaGuardia if one was routed into Brooklyn better than other prospective transit centers. The streets approaching Broadway Junction allow one to drive back to the Brooklyn or Williamsburg bridges or out to Central Queens as well. Because of this, one can get many places at Broadway Junction that may not easily appear in the neighborhood at large.

The area around Broadway Junction is a rougher part of Brooklyn to say the least so a prospective non-resident passenger may want to exercise more caution if exiting the station than they would at a Manhattan or Downtown Brooklyn station. This is not to say the area is all bad, it is rather to say that the area has a larger share of urban problems than areas surrounding other major New York subway stations. As I was explaining in the blog dedicated to the A and C train, one will notice that the areas of Brooklyn get progressively better as the trains gets closer to Manhattan. There are some very troubled sections near Broadway Junction as there are some not so troubled sections, each street should be treated on a block by block basis. One should not drop their guard wherever they travel in New York or anywhere for that matter, I learned that growing up in Baltimore, Maryland. At the same time, however one should be more on guard when traversing a given area, the streets around Broadway Junction are definitely an area one should be more on guard around.

So in conclusion, I am hoping that a prospective traveler realizes what they can do with trains at Broadway Junction. If taking the Brown letter lines, they can go above ground between Jamaica Center and the Williamsburg Bridge, the Blue Letter lines can take them between Downtown Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn and the Rockaway Peninsula, and the Silver Letter line can take them towards the end of Brooklyn and Manhattan each. With all the JFK connection possibilities as well, one can do more traveling to the Junction than they can at another station in Brooklyn at least. Broadway Junction allows one to freely travel across Northern Brooklyn, its location is at a major crossroads of a needs improvement neighborhood but its usefulness is far greater than its problems.