More New Yorkers will be able to get to and from Rockaway Beach on summer weekends solely by train.
The Rockaway Park Shuttle is extending its service to the Rockaway Parkway stop on Saturdays and Sundays to let beachgoers transfer to and from A trains in either direction through September.
“While I can’t offer you a trip to Aruba or to Greece, what I can offer you is great service to one of our New York beaches in the Rockaways,” NYC Transit Interim President Demetrius Crichlow said on Tuesday.
The Rockaway Park Shuttle will extend from an eight-car train to a 10-car train to hold more people, MTA officials said. The shuttle will operate from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the weekends from Rockaway Boulevard for beachgoers traveling on trains serving both the Lefferts Boulevard and Far Rockaway branches.
The shuttle’s extended summer weekend service means it will hit four new stops: Rockaway Boulevard, Aqueduct Racetrack, Aqueduct – N. Conduit Ave and Howard Beach – JFK Airport, MTA officials said.
The news comes amid growing concern over how subway systems will fare after Gov. Kathy Hochul halted the MTA’s congestion pricing plan. More than $16 billion in plans to upgrade the subway’s service – including extending the Second Avenue subway into East Harlem and making a whopping 23 stations more accessible – are now on pause.
And frequent users of the G train are already separately preparing for limited service this summer because of an MTA construction process that’ll render certain stations unusable for weeks at a time.
Funding for the extended service came out of $35 million outlined in last year’s fiscal budget for subway service extensions. The move comes after transit advocates lobbied for shorter train wait times for commuters.
Hochul did not appear at an MTA press conference on Tuesday to announce the news. Instead, MTA CEO and Chair Janno Lieber delivered the news alongside other transit officials.
“The MTA is the greenest and most hassle-free way to get there,” Lieber said. “Why sit in traffic when you can beat the rush in transit and you can return calls, catch up on your TikToks and you don’t have to worry about any of those aggravated drivers and the congestion?”
However, New Yorkers may still have to deal with limited access to some of the city’s beaches and pools even with the extended service. The city is still scrambling to hire enough lifeguards to service all of the city’s beaches – it still needed hundreds more hires to have a full staff as of last month.
Also starting this month, the B, D, J and M lines will come every eight minutes during midday and evenings on weekends, the MTA said. The 3 and 5 trains will come every 10 minutes during that same time period.