W (New York City Subway service)
New York City Subway service
The W Broadway Local is a rapid transit service of the New York City Subway's B Division. Its route emblem, or "bullet", is colored yellow since it uses the BMT Broadway Line in Manhattan.
The W operates weekdays during daytime hours only between Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, Queens and Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan, making all stops along the full route; limited rush hour service is extended beyond Whitehall Street to and from Bay Parkway in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, or 86th Street in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The W is internally staffed and scheduled as part of the N.
Introduced on July 22, 2001, the W originally ran at all times on the BMT West End Line and BMT Fourth Avenue Line in Brooklyn to Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue across the Manhattan Bridge, running express on the Broadway Line. It was truncated in 2004 to its current service pattern, running local on the Broadway Line to Whitehall Street until June 25, 2010, when it was eliminated due to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)'s financial crisis. The route was later restored on November 7, 2016, using its original emblem and 2004–2010 routing, as part of the updated service pattern related to the opening of the Second Avenue Subway.
Service history
Context
The W was originally devised as an extra Broadway service designation. This service was essentially a variant of the N route, which in the 1970s and 1980s made express stops on the Broadway Line between Forest Hills–71st Avenue in Queens and Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn. At the time, some N trains (until 1976 designated as EE) were designated with a diamond N bullet as early as 1982 on trains, but beginning in 1979 on maps; these trains made all stops on the Broadway Line, and traveled only between 71st Avenue and Whitehall Street. It appeared as a diamond bullet on rollsign blinds ordered for the then-new R68, R68A and R110B subway cars which entered service between 1986 and 1993, as well as on replacement rollsign curtains ordered for the R30 through R46 B Division subway cars overhauled between 1985 and 1992.
The public source identifies “W (New York City Subway service)” as new York City Subway service. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around York, City and Subway.
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This entry incorporates text from “W (New York City Subway service)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.