The R train is a part of the Yellow Letter Line subway family, its siblings are the N and Q train. As I explained in my previous posting, the subway families are lines with the same general color scheme. They are colored this way because in the borough of Manhattan where they are designed to travel, they all tend to take an Avenue route at the same time. In Brooklyn the R train enters underground near the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. It travels roughly across the borough hall and fulton street mall area in Downtown Brooklyn before approaching Atlantic Terminal. Atlantic Terminal is Brooklyn's largest subway station and the most important one for any trains going to Central or Southern Brooklyn. I will devote another blog solely to that station to give one an idea of the layout of it. After the R comes to Atlantic Terminal, it goes down 4th Avenue to 95th Street in my neighborhood of Bay Ridge stopping at approxiametly every 6-10 Streets. The R is a local train during daytime hours, during the late night hours it makes express stops at only Atlantic Terminal, 36th Street, 59th Street, and 95th Street. The R shares a line it's sibling N which acts as an express train stopping at Atlantic Terminal, 36th Street, and 59th street before turning off of 4th Avenue and the Orange Letter Line D which acts as an express train from Atlantic Terminal to 36th Street where it turns off of 4th Avenue.
The R train goes through the following neighborhoods, it goes through Brooklyn Heights first, Downtown Brooklyn, BoCoCa, Park Slope, Greenwood, Gowanus, Sunset Park, and finally Bay Ridge where I live. A breakdown of the neighborhoods follows below. Brooklyn Heights has the most expensive real estate in the borough of Brooklyn. It has the best view of Manhattan from the Promenade over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway seeing all of Manhattan between the Staten Island Ferry and Brooklyn Bridge on the East Side of the borough. The World Trade Center, rest in peace could once be viewed from Brooklyn Heights before 9/11/01 which we shall never forget. Downtown Brooklyn is the next neighborhood directly east of Brooklyn Heights. Downtown Brooklyn is the area where most of Brooklyn's courthouses, business districts, financial centers, and other such areas central to the borough. It is roughly between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges and the intersection of 4th Avenue, Atlantic Avenue, and Flatbush Avenue. After the R train leaves Atlantic Terminal, it is no longer in these neighborhoods as it begins traveling down 4th Avenue. Prior to traveling on Fourth Avenue, one can connect from the R to the Red and Green Number Lines at Borough Hall and Atlantic Terminal, the Blue Letter Lines at MetroTech, and the Orange Letter Lines at MetroTech, Dekalb Avenue, and Atlantic Terminal. Below is the platform for the D, N, and R trains, it is located in the Pacific Street portion of the station with all trains going to Southwest Brooklyn. The other two platforms are for the Red and Green Number trains going to Central and Eastern Brooklyn and the other Yellow and Orange Letter trains going to Southern Brooklyn.
When traveling down 4th Avenue, the train first comes into BoCoCa and Park Slope. BoCoCa is the abbreviation for the neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens. These three neighborhoods are on the West Side of Fourth Avenue and with Park Slope have some of the nicest Brownstones in Brooklyn outside of Brooklyn Heights. My godparents used to live in Boerum Hill and I'd visit this area frequently when I came up from Baltimore as a youth. Park Slope is on the East Side of Fourth Avenue and has been frequently rated as Brooklyn's top neighborhood due to it's night life along 5th and 7th Avenues and it's overall atmosphere. Park Slope borders Prospect Park on its West Side and has been home to a number of high profile people both famous and infamous depending on your point of view such as NYS' current Senior US Senator Schmuck Schumer (He's an enemy of the 2nd amendment and thereby an enemy of mine politically speaking). BoCoCa and Park Slope consistute the stops of Atlantic Terminal, Union Street, and 9th Street. At 9th Street one can transfer to the Green and Orange Letter Lines and after 9th Street, the train travels into South Slope/Greenwood (my exact boundaries of these may be slightly incorrect) and Gowanus.
The neighborhoods after 9th Street become a little grittier than the neighborhoods previously described. Both are comprised of Brownstones yet they are in more of a transitional and industrial area especially between 4th Avenue and the BQE (Brooklyn Queens Expressway). The area is also somewhat of a gentrified area as developers constantly look for ways to expand their territory. This area continues towards Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn's largest cemetery where the area then turns into Sunset Park at approxiametly 36th Street. 36th Street is symbolic for not only the change in neighborhoods but in the change of subways as well. The D of the Orange Letter family turns off of the 4th Avenue line and comes above ground near New Utrecht Avenue and continues towards Coney Island at an angle. I will discuss that further when describing the D train in Brooklyn. Back to the neighborhoods at hand, the next neighborhood Sunset Park is a place that I would best describe as being in the rebuilding stages. Up to the early 1980s, blocks of Park Slope often had decayed housing, abandoned vehicles, and graffiti work was more out of control than it is today. It can currently be described as an immigrant neighborhood as the area between 6th Avenue and the BQE is home to many Central American immigrants most of whom appear to be from Mexico and the area between 6th and 10th Avenue is home to many Asian immigrants giving the area along 8th Avenue the nickname of Brooklyn Chinatown. Because of this, one will notice when traveling on the R train especially that they will be in the company of several Asian and Hispanic riders. As such they may see musicians of these cultures playing their cultural music for cash when riding on the subway or they also may see an opportunity to purchase ethnic food which is occassionally sold by each group. Today when I rode I saw churros for sale as pictured below, this is one of the many things one may witness when riding through Sunset Park.
At 59th Street near the end of Sunset Park, one will find that the N and R trains split. The R continues down 4th Avenue while the N travels to Coney Island partially underground. The 59th street station is one I often take a bus to as opposed to the Bay Ridge Avenue station which is closer to my apartment. This is because I live about a mile from the subway going up a hill on a windy street close to the New York Bay and I figure as the same bus stops at both stations, I may as well have the freedom of choice between the local R or express N trains. As the trains continue on, the R train enters Bay Ridge after going under the BQE which curves from it's third avenue position to move around Bay Ridge and to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The R train makes 4 stops in Bay Ridge, it is the only train that serves Bay Ridge and makes its final stop about 6 blocks from the beginning of Shore Road which is under the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. As a neighborhood Bay Ridge is bounded by the Belt Parkway and the BQE. It is a historically working to middle class community of Irish and Italian Americans with a more conservative voting pattern than the rest of New York city. Over the years it has gotten slightly more liberal and more ethnically diverse with a sizable number of people of Middle Eastern, Asian, and Hispanic descent. As such, the neighborhood attracts many firefighters, welders, and taxi drivers due to the neighborhood atmosphere. Bay Ridge's rents are reasonable but its housing values are considerably higher than other parts of Brooklyn especially near Shore Road and the Southern part of the neighborhood. Bay Ridge is the closest neighborhood to Staten Island in Brooklyn and it is not uncommon for people to go back and forth on the ransom bridge. By ransom bridge, I am referring to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and I call it that because the toll costs $11.00 to drive across to Staten Island and the rate is supposedly going up, it may already have but I cannot be for sure as I try my hardest not to drive across it.
Now that the R train has been described in full, I must describe what angers me about it. Because the subway lines serve Manhattan first, it is an arduous task for one to travel between two nearby neighborhoods in an outer borough using the subway system. To go to Bensonhurst which is two neighborhoods east of Bay Ridge, I must go north two neighborhoods than southeast two neighborhoods on two different subway lines when if I drive I can go in 15 minutes straight across. My neighborhood is not the only one like this, in Bedford Stuyvesant and Brownsville in North Central Brooklyn, one must travel into Manhattan on either the A/C or 3/4 trains to make a connection with the two trains yet both neighborhoods border each other. To get from Midwood to Borough Park in South Central Brooklyn, one must take the B/Q train to Coney Island and then take the F or D train back up towards Manhattan or go to Atlantic Center to get to the neighborhoods. This reflects not only on the subway system but on the city services which I can describe below with this picture.
As one can see from this picture above, this is what the streets in Bay Ridge look like with the current winter storm. Gloomy Bloomy (my nickname for hizzoner Mayor Michael Bloomberg who I also dislike politically) failed to mobilize both storm emergency and sanitation workers due to the storm on December 26th, 2010 and we are still facing snow on the sidewalk, unplowed side streets, and trash that has failed to have been picked up. As a resident I am outraged by this, more outraged than I am at increased fares and possible tolls. I am outraged because we pay our taxes and contribute to the city very well here in Bay Ridge, we are one of the safest areas in the city, we are one of the most responsible areas, we have a sizable number of FDNY and DSNY workers who reside here yet because we are an outer borough, we have to deal with being second class citizens in terms of emergency cleanup measures. This city's government is too Manhattan-Centric, it pled for the US to socialize Wall Street's losses when President Obama (who I voted for) passed the Stimulus Bill (which I didn't support), this city's government will consider extending the city's 7 line subway into New Jersey and will go back and forth on the 2nd Avenue subway (which I agree should be built but not at the expense of the outer boroughs) but this city's government still two weeks after the storm cannot do a thing for even the most responsible of outer borough neighborhoods.
The outer boroughs are what keep this city moving though, Manhattan itself is either an extreme of wealth or an extreme of poverty but the working middle class such as myself, the majority of us in New York City live in the outer boroughs and we keep Manhattan running at the expense of our own neighborhoods. My bet on experience of living here would be that of the Sanitation Workers, Firefighters, Transit Workers, Police, Hospital Workers, Teachers, and other such professions that keep our city in check, if those people are New York City residents, 9 out of 10 of them do not live in Manhattan. I say this because when they are asked to serve the city, they must abandon their own neighborhood to serve Manhattan first. Don't get me wrong, Manhattan is great, it is what people come to New York to see, but we in the outer boroughs shouldn't be second class citizens to it as we are the majority of the city's population. I am done ranting for now, I hope that after reading this one has learned about how the R trains works in Brooklyn, how it should work better, the difference in how the outer boroughs are treated and now I must go to a birthday party for the friend I went to buy a gift for.
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