The Coney Island-bound D-train runs on the N-line this weekend. And the Manhattan-bound N-train runs on the D-line. Seriously, WTF. It’s mildly annoying when the MTA schedules one of these diversions, but I wonder if they have any fracking idea that doing both at the same time makes things expletiveally worse.

Expletiveally – it’s like exponentially, except with F-bombs.

Here are your South Brooklyn subway advisories for the weekend of February 19-20 (starting roughly 11pm Friday, ending around 5am Monday, unless otherwise noted):

Affected train	Weekend service disruption
	Coney Island-bound D-trains run on the N-line from 36th Street to Coney Island. Go to Coney Island and backtrack on the Manhattan-bound train to reach the intermediate stations. 25th Avenue Station – the Coney Island-bound platform will be closed all of next week, to reopen at the end of next weekend. (All times.)
	Manhattan-bound F-trains skip Ft. Hamilton Parkway, 15th Street-Prospect Park, and Smith-9th Sts due to the Culver Viaduct Rehabilitation Project (all times until May).
	Manhattan-bound N-trains run on the D-line from Coney Island to 36th Street. Go to 36th Street and backtrack on the Coney Island-bound train to reach intermediate stations. Overnight: no downtown service toward Brooklyn. Coney Island-bound trains run over the bridge from Canal Street to DeKalb Avenue. Use nearby 4-train stations for service to Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street.
	Manhattan-bound Q-trains skip Avenue M and Avenue H are closed (all times until Fall 2011).
	No downtown service toward Brooklyn. Bay Ridge-bound trains run over the bridge from Canal Street to DeKalb Avenue. Use nearby 4-train stations for service to Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street.

Reminder: these subway alerts apply to travel within and from South Brooklyn only. Even though that should be obvious from the fact that (1) you’re reading this site and (2) I only ever mention the same five subway lines, it occurs to me that I never pointed that out explicitly. So whoomp, there it is. After being kinda inconsistent about it for a while, I’ve decided that these alerts will also provide info relevant for your trips to North Brooklyn and Manhattan on these five lines, but I’m only going to fret about what happens on our side of the river – the minute you cross into New York County, you’re on your own.

Here are your South Brooklyn subway advisories for the weekend of February 12-13, ending at 5am on Monday:

Affected train	Weekend service disruption
	Coney Island bound trains run over the N-line from 36th Street to Coney Island (begins 4am Saturday morning). For service to 9 Av, Fort Hamilton Pkwy, 50, and 55 Sts, take the CI-bound D to New Utrecht Av-62 St and transfer to a Manhattan-bound D. For service to 71, 79 Sts, 18, 20 Avs, Bay Pkwy, 25 Av, and Bay 50 St, take the CI-bound D to Coney Island and transfer to a Manhattan-bound D. For service from these stations, take the Manhattan-bound D to 62 St-New Utrecht Av or 36 St and transfer to a CI-bound D.
	Manhattan-bound F-trains skip Ft. Hamilton Parkway, 15th Street-Prospect Park, and Smith-9th Sts due to the Culver Viaduct Rehabilitation Project (all times until May).
	No overnight service to Downtown Manhattan or Downtown Brooklyn – trains continue to run express over the Manhattan Bridge. Transfer to the 4-train at Atlantic Ave-Pacific St to get kinda close to where you’re going. During the overnight hours, Coney Island-bound N-trains will stop at DeKalb Ave, but Manhattan-bound trains will not – transfer at Atlantic Ave-Pacific St to the Q-train instead.
	Manhattan-bound Q-trains skip Avenue M and Avenue H are closed (all times until Fall 2011).
	Trains run non-stop between Dekalb Avenue and Canal Street – no Downtown Brooklyn or Downtown Manhattan service (begins 6am Saturday morning) Transfer to the 4-train at Atlantic Ave-Pacific St to get kinda close to where you’re going. Overnight shuttle to Bay Ridge is shortened – does not operate between 36th Street and 59th Street. Transfer between the N- and R-trains at 59th Street.

The last time I said we were getting off the hook easy, it turned out that (a) a bug in the MTA web site was keeping me from seeing the really bad stuff, and (b) the weather ended up canceling the bad stuff anyway. Well, since then, I’ve asked to get on the MTA’s list of press contacts, so I’ll get the service advisories straight from the horses mouth from now on. And this time, we really are getting off the hook easy. The R’s are running normal, the D’s and N’s are running local but on their normal routes, and there’s nothing going on with the F’s and Q’s other than the usual “at all times” Manhattan-bound closures.

So here it is, your subway advisories for the weekend of February 4 and 5 (beginning at 11pm Friday night unless otherwise noted):

Affected train	Weekend service disruption
	D-trains run local on the R line between DeKalb Avenue and 36th Street in Brooklyn due to track work (concrete pour) south of DeKalb Avenue.
	All times: Manhattan-bound F-trains skip Ft. Hamilton Parkway, 15th Street-Prospect Park, and Smith-9th Sts due to the Culver Viaduct Rehabilitation Project.
	N-trains run local on the R-line between DeKalb Avenue and 59th Street in Brooklyn due to track work (concrete pour) south of DeKalb Avenue.
	Reminder: Manhattan-bound stations at Avenue M and Avenue H are closed from “Hell” to “Freezes Over.”
	Trains running normally. Surprised? I am.

If you haven’t heard: the MTA is making some adjustments to its bus schedules – a reduction of service on 40 routes, and an increase of service on 24 routes. I would characterize most of the changes as extremely minor – typically spacing out buses by an extra minute or two.

The bigger cuts were somewhat more significant, and here’s how the biggest cut was reported by the NY Post:

The biggest loser in the city is the B36 — running from Sheepshead Bay to Coney Island in Brooklyn — where riders will have to wait an extra two to three minutes between buses.

That’s a 17 percent decrease in service, documents show.

There’s actually two things seriously flawed in this statement, and I’ll get back to the first one in a bit. Let’s hone in on that 17% reduction, since it’s a fairly damning statistic which was also reported by others, such as News 12 Brooklyn, the NYC news organization that I have the least amount of respect for.

B36 service is being reduced by 17%… on Saturdays. There are no changes to the Sunday schedule, no changes to the weekday schedule. Taking that into consideration, the actual cut is about 2%. A gross exaggeration of an MTA service change, but one that’s par for the course in news media coverage of the MTA.

For its part, CBS 2 correctly noted that the changes applied only to the weekend schedule. But play this video and listen to the first reaction interview: an angry quote from a school crossing guard complaining that the only time she sees buses are between 2:30 and 3:30, which happen to be the hours a crossing guard is on duty and might notice those things. And what do crossing guards and schoolkids have to do with weekend bus service, anyway?

So, we’ve got (1) a gross exaggeration of facts, and (2) reactions from people who aren’t impacted but are angry enough to fit the narrative. I repeat: par for the course in news media coverage of the MTA. American history textbooks call this yellow journalism. I call it lying.

I repeat: I’m really tired of it.

Incidentally, the other thing that was really messed up about the NY Post report is that B36 wait times are not going up 2 to 3 minutes, they’re going up 3 to 5 minutes – in particular, riders traveling in the evening will now have to wait up to 20 minutes for a bus. I think that’s terrible – speaking for myself, once my potential wait time goes over 15 minutes, I start thinking of another way to get to where I’m going. Or maybe I just decide to stay in and make it a Netflix night.

Hey, CBS 2, maybe instead of interviewing a crossing guard about the school day, the more useful interview would have been a shopper or barhopper or other weekend traveler who might decide their trip wasn’t really worth it after all?

Along those lines, Allan Rosen, the transit contributor at Sheepshead Bites, wrote an exceptional article about this. Yes, he did mistakenly repeat the NY Post’s 17% statistic, but he hit on several other important points, like the sacrifice of bus funds to pay for an increase in subway service on the J-train, the impact of long wait times and bus bunching on reliability, the impact of reliability on ridership, and more. (He also acknowledged the mistake on the stat, because that’s just the kind of guy he is.) If you haven’t seen it already, I recommend taking a look now, because it’s the kind of fact-based criticism that you hardly ever see anywhere else.

The bus cut details can be found on pages 128 and 129 of this PDF.

Update, Feb 4: The original story mistakenly stated that all of the 64 changes were to weekend service. That was incorrect. I read the MTA’s abbreviation “wkd” incorrectly. That’s how I abbreviate WeeKenD… but that’s how the MTA abbreviates WeeKDay. It also stated that the M22 was being cut on Saturday/Sunday, when in fact weekday service is changing and Saturday/Sunday service is staying the same.

Friggin’ glass houses.

No R-trains this weekend, folks. Also there is a diversion for Manhattan-bound D-trains. Here are your subway advisories for the weekend of January 29-30:

Affected train	Weekend service disruption
	Manhattan-bound D-trains run on the N-line from Coney Island to 36th Street. For service to Bay 50 St, 25 Av, Bay Pkwy, 20, 18 Avs, 79, and 71 Sts, take the D-train to New Utrecht Av-62 St and transfer downstairs to a Coney Island-bound D-train. For service to 55, 50 Sts, Ft Hamilton Pkwy, and 9 Av, take the D-train to 36 St and transfer to a Coney Island-bound D-train.
	N-trains run local from 59th Street to Canal Street, Manhattan.
	Reminder: Manhattan-bound stations at Avenue M and Avenue H are closed from “Hell” to “Freezes Over.”
	No R-trains in Brooklyn. Sorry. N-trains replace the R-train north of 59th Street. Shuttle buses replace R-trains throughout Bay Ridge from 59th Street to 95th Street.

The original post has been removed to clear up confusion.

BK Southie readers, you awesome bunch of people, we have a question for you. For a little while, we were posting these weekend subway alerts on Thursday afternoon. Then the MTA gave us a break from the constant mayhem for a few weeks, so we didn’t post anything. When weekend diversions started up again, we put them in our handy weekend subway alert sidebar thingy.

Do y’all have a preference? Do you like one? The other? Both?

This weekend, there are (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) no R-trains. Anywhere. Not in Brooklyn, not in Manhattan, not in Queens. Look for shuttle buses on the Bay Ridge portion of the route. D- and N-trains will run local to pick up the slack over the rest of 4th Avenue. Also, there are no F-trains through Park Slope as the MTA gets ready for the Culver Viaduct Clusterfuck. No biggie if you’re staying local, not so much fun if you’re trying to get to Manhattan or North Brooklyn that way.

The following changes begin Friday night as early as 10:30pm, and run through Monday at 5am.

Affected train	Weekend service disruption
	No trains between Church Avenue and Jay Street – replaced with shuttle bus service. For service to Jay Street, York Street, or Manhattan, look for the Express Shuttle Bus at Church Avenue. For travel to stations between Church and Jay, look for the Local Shuttle Bus at Church Avenue. Better yet, tell your buddies in Park Slope you’ll be slumming it in South Brooklyn this weekend. They’ll probably just give you and endless amount of grief over the awesomeness of their neighborhood while they whinge about spending their entire paycheck on rent.
	Trains run local from Coney Island to Astoria. Wheeee.
	Reminder: Manhattan-bound stations at Avenue M and Avenue H are closed from “Hell” to “Freezes Over.” Now that I think about it, they’re closed until the Fall. They’ve been closed for several month now already. F-train riders are losing Manhattan-bound service at 15th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway, starting this weekend and going to May. By my count, “now until May” is a lot less than “has been going on for several months already until Fall.” So seriously, Park Slopers, what’s with all the whinging?
	R-train? What R-train? Shuttle buses replace R-train service along the Bay Ridge spur (from 59th Street to 95th Street). N-trains run local to pick up the slack on the other side of 59th Street.

The commute from Coney Island to Manhattan and beyond can be very painfully nerve challenging by way of the local F train.  The MTA will begin a construction project, history proves these to be over budget and behind schedule that will force riders to take a local train to a bus and then back to a local train even during rush hour commute this weekend! Some [Manhattan-bound] stations along the route will be closed [until May] and riders are not happy with the MTA…surprised?

[Further update from WNYC: The below changes will start next weekend - Friday, January 14 - instead of the weekend coming up, due to a potential snow event forecast this weekend and the MTA not wanting to get caught with their snowpants down again. Via FIPS.]

As you know, the fares for NYC subways and buses went up last week. We’re all getting shafted, but we can still game the system and come out less screwed than usual. Here’s how!

Pay-Per-Ride Metrocard – Never have money left over again… ALMOST

The base fare stays the same at $2.25 per ride. And we get a discount of sorts – an extra 7% on our cards whenever we spend $10 or more (this is a smaller discount than before, but it’s still a discount). In theory, the discount gives us the equivalent of $2.10 per ride. But we pretty much always end up with money left over on a Metrocard – less than $2.25 on a card – because the vending machines are always giving us odd amounts that aren’t divisable by $2.25.

These “deals” suck. Never buy these.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the vending machines gave you the option of buying exactly the right amount for the number of rides you get?

Well, they don’t, but now it doesn’t matter. Because we did the math for you.

Your guide to a Metrocard that never has money left over. Almost. Cut this out and carry it in your wallet.

The vending machines give you an “other amounts” option in addition to their crappy deals. Use it, and enter one of these amounts. Now, unfortunately, you can only spend increments of five cents at the vending machines, so you still won’t get that “perfect” Metrocard most of the time. (And unfortunately, I didn’t take that into account in the original version of this article. Oops.) But now, you don’t have to overspend by any more than five cents. Spending $10.55 will get you a five-ride pass with only $0.04 left over. If you don’t mind dropping the dough, the sweet spot is at 17, 18, and 19 rides. (Too bad $42.05 plus 7% leaves you a penny shy of 20 rides.)

Single-Ride Metrocards – A total rip-off

If you’re buying a Metrocard for only a single trip, it will cost you $2.50. Never buy this.

Unlimited Metrocards – Know your breakeven point

So it turns out that 25% of us have been buying 30-day passes and then only using them 45 times or less – meaning we would have been saving money by getting the Pay-Per-Ride pass instead of plunking down $89 each month. With the new prices and the new discounts, the breakeven point for the 30-day Metrocard moves a little higher.

The cost-per-ride using a 30-day Metrocard.

The $104 30-day Metrocard makes 50 trips cost $2.08 each, just under the $2.10 we’d spend for a perfect, no-money-left-over Pay-Per-Ride pass. This is the equivalent of going to work and back every work day, and also going to three other places and back. Or going to work every work day, and stopping off at Target on your way back home six times. And so on. If you make fewer trips than this each month, you should be getting a Pay-Per-Ride pass instead of the 30-day Unlimited.

The cost-per-ride using a 7-day Metrocard

The $29 7-day Metrocard makes 14 trips cost $2.07 each. In other words, a five-day workweek, plus visiting your super-annoying friends in super-annoying Williamsburg on Saturday night and getting your Nathan’s fix at Coney Island on Sunday. If you make fewer trips then that, then you know what you have to do.

Buying a 30-day Metrocard is always more economical than buying a bunch of 7-day Metrocards, but we totally get it if you don’t have $104 to plunk down all at once.

Express Buses

Your guide to an EXPRESS BUS Metrocard that never has money left over. Almost.

The base fare for express buses is now $5.50. Using a pay-per-ride Metrocard – and using our almost-no-money-leftover guide – you can get your cost for a ride down to $5.14.

The cost-per-ride using a 7-day Express Bus Metrocard

The express bus breakeven threshold is lower than its subway counterpart at 10 rides for a 7-day period. Drop the $50 for a weekly pass if you know you’re going to work all five days of the workweek, or if you also use the subway or bus on weekends. But if you have a short week coming up (Doctor Martin Luther King, I’m looking at you), you should switch to the Pay-Per-Ride Metrocard that week.

How to save money driving over the Verrazano Bridge

Move to Staten Island, because the MTA hates Brooklynites.