With the city promising to improve mass transit via congestion pricing revenue, Gary Reilly, author of neighborhood blog, First and Court has started a petition asking the MTA to restore express subway service on the F line and to extend the V line for local service to Brooklyn:

The petition, which you can sign here, already has over 2,200 signatures on it. Reilly writes:

Increases in the commuting population in Brooklyn have taxed the transit infrastructure, and the plan for congestion pricing in Manhattan will further add to the stresses on subway commuters. Enhancing transit service in the outer boroughs is vital to the quality of life in our rapidly growing communities and to the feasibility of any congestion pricing plan.

Currently, along the F line in Brooklyn, a set of express tracks lie unused while the local service gets more and more crowded. In addition, the V line currently stops at 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, resulting in near-empty V trains through Manhattan, while F trains are packed.

A New York City Transit spokesman tells the Brooklyn Paper that it won’t be possible to activate the F line’s unused express tracks until 2012 due to construction work on two Brooklyn stations. Some history:

An express F ran between Jay Street-Borough Hall and Kings Highway
during rush hours through the 1970s, when it was discontinued for track
repair work. The dormant express tracks run below the local track
between Bergen and Carroll streets and beside the local tracks on the
elevated portion to Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. South of the Slope,
the track follows a separate tunnel to the Church Street station.

Transit
experts have said in the past that an F express could stop at York
Street station in DUMBO, Jay Street, Seventh Avenue and Church Avenue,
before running local to Coney Island.

Photo: Tom Callan for Brooklyn Paper