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Park Slope's 7th Ave. Subway Station Gets New High-Speed Turnstiles

By Kathleen Culliton | August 5, 2016 3:25pm | Updated on August 8, 2016 8:29am
 The MTA's $400,000 plan to renovate the Seventh Avenue stop included eight new turnstiles and a repositioned station booth, but not an elevator.
The MTA's $400,000 plan to renovate the Seventh Avenue stop included eight new turnstiles and a repositioned station booth, but not an elevator.
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MTA

PARK SLOPE — The MTA has installed eight new turnstiles at the Seventh Avenue F and G subway station, Councilman Brad Lander's office announced in a statement on Friday.

Four waist-level turnstiles were installed at the Seventh and Eighth Avenue entrances after residents complained of rush hour lines caused by four roundabout, or revolving-door, turnstiles, the statement said.

The $400,000 Seventh Avenue station renovation also includes plans to move a station booth closer to the Seventh Avenue entrance and to close part of the station's mezzanine level "free-zone passageways," or areas of the station accessible without a MetroCard swipe.

Those renovations are expected to be completed in the next several weeks, the statement said.

“People will save a little time, feel a little less stress, and some people will catch a train they would have missed,” said Lander a statement. The councilman campaigned for the turnstiles by handing out leaflets to people waiting in line to swipe.

But critics of the MTA's plan have previously argued that the station, which serves 12,000 people on an average weekday and those headed to Methodist Hospital, needs an elevator more than turnstiles.

"It is evident that a subway station serving this many people, as well as a major hospital, should be accessible to those who cannot easily climb or descend stairs," Preserve Park Slope said in a statement on its website in 2015.  

MTA representatives rejected the proposal because an elevator would cost an estimated $15 million to install.  

The Seventh Avenue station will be the only express stop between Church Avenue and Jay Street-MetroTech if express service is restored to the F Line in 2017.