The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will suspend L train service between Manhattan and Brooklyn for two weekends next month, adding to a long run of disruptions that riders say they have simply come to expect.
The L will not run between Lorimer Street and Eighth Avenue in either direction from 11:15 p.m. Friday through 5 a.m. Monday on Oct. 2-5 and again on Oct. 9-12.
An MTA spokesperson told The Post the closures are tied to infrastructure upgrades: “We are installing new communications equipment and taking advantage of the outage to complete additional routine track maintenance work.”
The agency did not disclose the cost of the work, how many riders will be affected, or whether additional shutdown weekends are planned.
For commuters who rely on the line to get to work, the news lands as one more disruption in a pattern that has worn down their patience.
April Diaz, 34, rides the L from Bushwick to Eighth Avenue in Manhattan for her job at a discount store. She said she hadn’t seen notices about the closure and now has to find a new way to get to work.
“What if I take the bus and it gets stuck in traffic? I am going to be late,” Diaz said. “I don’t like going to work late.”
Diaz, a mother of two, said the stakes are personal. “I have to get to work,” she said. “I have two daughters to take care of.”
John Smith, 65, a postal worker who normally takes the L from Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenue to Eighth Avenue, said he’s grown accustomed to the MTA’s disruptions even though he resents them.
“I’m numb to it now. I’m pretty used to it but I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all,” Smith said.
During the shutdown, Smith expects to need three separate trains to complete his usual commute. “I do have to get up earlier because I got all these different trains to take,” he said. “I’m paying all this money and getting lousy service.”
Carlos Marte, who makes home visits across the city for his health care job, said the frequency of weekend service changes led him to cut back his own work schedule, now handling only half days on Saturdays.
“It’s every weekend!” Marte said. “If it’s not the L train, it’s going to be some other train that’s disrupted or changed on the weekends.”
The upcoming shutdowns affect one of the busiest crosstown lines in the subway system, connecting Brooklyn neighborhoods including Bushwick and Williamsburg to job centers in Manhattan.


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