MTA New York City Transit today announced it will extend late night  service to lower Manhattan in order to improve subway connectivity for customers traveling between Manhattan and the southwestern end of Brooklyn.

Late night  service currently operates as a shuttle between Bay Ridge-95 St and 36 St in Brooklyn. Customers coming from Bay Ridge and Sunset Park must transfer between the  shuttle and  trains in order to travel to other parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan. The proposed service extension would shift the northern final stop of the late-night  shuttle from 36 St to Whitehall St-South Ferry.

“We always want to better serve our customers by strengthening service whenever we have sustainable resources to do so,” said MTA New York City Transit President Veronique “Ronnie” Hakim. “This added service will provide off peak customers with additional travel options and add seamless connectivity to vital transit hubs in Brooklyn.”

The proposal gives Bay Ridge customers a direct link to Manhattan while providing alternate service for late night customers who use the  between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn or those who use the  train between DeKalb Av and 36 St in Brooklyn. Providing these types of service redundancies can reduce customer wait times by nearly half so that customers in increasingly populated areas such as Sunset Park, Greenwood Heights, Park Slope, Gowanus, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights and downtown Brooklyn have more than one option to get home late at night.  In addition, extending the  shuttle to Whitehall St-South Ferry provides customers with a link to the Staten Island Ferry, which launched 30-minute late-night service last year.

The demand for such a link between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn was reinforced by customer feedback at recent public hearings for Second Avenue Subway, as well as feedback from elected officials and members of the community from affected neighborhoods. In addition, NYC Transit’s analysis of ridership patterns found that most late night customers who currently use the  shuttle transferred to or from another subway line. Extending the  service would facilitate these transfers, making them easier, faster, or in some cases, unnecessary.