Rockaway Commuters Bemoan Impending Service Cuts to A Train
The only subway line out of the peninsula is scheduled for a 17-week shutdown for post-Sandy rehab — and riders are extremely vexed about it. This article originally appeared in The City. By Haidee Chu QUEENS - Cheryl Motley, 62, rises at around 5 a.m. every weekday to make her two-hour commute from Far Rockaway, Queens to her office in Brooklyn on the A then R train. Come the new year, though, she will have to wake up even earlier as an upcoming service outage to the A train is set to shake up her routine. Starting in mid-January, service for the A train will end at Howard Beach for 17 weeks until May — disconnecting over 9,000 daily commuters on Broad Channel and the entire Rockaway peninsula from the only subway service that carries them to the mainland. “Oh my god, it’s devastating,” Motley, a 30-year Rockaway resident, told THE CITY while riding the Rockaway-bound A train home from work during rush hour Thursday. She recalled when Superstorm Sandy cut off trai...