MANHATTAN — The MTA plans to increase service on the L train to better meet riders’ needs on the heavily trafficked subway line.
The transit agency announced Monday its intention to formally expand weekend and rush-hour service on the crowded line, which runs in Manhattan along 14th Street between First and Eighth avenues, by the summer of 2012.
The increase will bring 11 additional round trips between Manhattan and Brooklyn on Saturdays and seven additional round trips on Sundays, as well as 16 additional off-peak and peak round trips on weekdays.
The plan, recommended at the MTA’s Transit Committee meeting Monday, will go before to the authority’s full board on Wednesday, but does not require a vote.
The move comes after State Sen. Daniel Squadron this summer asked for a review of service on the L line by the MTA that found service has not kept pace with line’s massive rise in ridership, including a 141-percent rise in weekend riders since 1998.
"This L train improvement is an important step toward a subway system that works for its riders every day of the week," Squadron said in a statement Monday, noting that the MTA currently operates 10 to 12 weekend trains per hour on the L line.
The MTA plans to implement the changes after it finishes replacing the line’s old signal system with a new state-of-the-art system called Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC), which is currently in the final stages, an MTA spokesman said. The increased service will cost the authority $1.7 million annually, a price consistent with the MTA’s 2012 budget, according to agency documents.
The added service is expected to relieve overcrowding on the line, MTA documents showed, from the current average of 110 percent capacity to 98 percent.
On Saturday afternoons, the trains are expected to go from 101 percent of capacity to 84 percent, MTA documents showed. On Saturday and Sunday nights, capacity is expected to drop from 104 percent to 83 percent, and from 129 percent to 90 percent, respectively.
