The MTA withdrew its proposed nine-month F-train reroute plan Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after Council Transportation Committee chair Selvena Brooks-Powers released a 22-page committee report arguing the plan would meaningfully harm 92,000 daily commuters in Brooklyn.

The reversal is a rare public defeat for the agency on a service-pattern decision and the most significant Council intervention in MTA operations since the 2023 Astoria bus redesign reversal.

“This was the right outcome,” Brooks-Powers said in a statement Friday afternoon. “We don’t reroute trains around 92,000 people without a serious conversation about what those people are losing.”

What was proposed

The original plan, presented at the MTA’s April 9 board meeting, would have rerouted F-train service from the Sixth Avenue line through the Manhattan Bridge starting in October 2026, in support of an 11-month signal modernization project on the F-train’s Rutgers Tunnel approach. The modernization is part of the agency’s $58 billion 2025–2029 capital plan.

Under the rerouted pattern, F trains would have run via the B/D pattern through the Manhattan Bridge, skipping East Broadway, Delancey/Essex, Second Avenue, and Broadway-Lafayette. Trains would have rejoined the Sixth Avenue line at West Fourth Street.

MTA Chief of Transit and Buses Demetrius Crichlow defended the plan at the board meeting as “the option that produces the shortest possible duration for the modernization,” arguing that doing the work without the reroute would extend the construction timeline by 14 months and add $112 million to the project’s $640 million cost.

What the Council report found

Brooks-Powers’ committee report made three findings the MTA’s response did not effectively contest.

First, the commute-time impact. The report calculated that the rerouted pattern would add an average of 14 minutes per round-trip for the 92,000 daily F-train riders who board at the four affected stations. The aggregate is 21,500 hours of added commute time per weekday — about 5.5 million hours over the nine-month pilot.

Second, the bus-substitution shortfall. The MTA’s plan included a substitute M14 SBS service running on a parallel route. The report’s analysis concluded the bus capacity would meet 38 percent of the displaced demand at peak.

Third, the equity impact. The four affected stations serve census tracts with median household income 31 percent below the citywide median.

What happens to the modernization

The MTA’s Friday statement said the agency “will return with an alternative implementation plan in 60 days.” Possibilities under discussion include a longer overnight-only construction window, a partial-reroute approach affecting only weekend service, or a full rebid of the project’s construction contract. Each alternative carries a cost penalty.