![]() Before the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, the city was more of a dense suburb that still had working farms on its outskirts. Like so many things in Brooklyn, it all began with the bridge. Map of the proposed Brooklyn Elevated Railroad, later known as the Lexington Ave El. But in the end, the IND Fulton Line was to be the last subway that the city built in the borough of Brooklyn, left unfinished, with dreams of better service long forgotten. The city had high hopes for the line, and for what it could do for the borough. The sorry state of the A train in Brooklyn wasn’t supposed to be this way. Why is there such an imbalance? It’s the typical tale of money, power and changing times. On Fulton St, if you catch a C train in 8 minutes, you’re lucky. Riders might complain about packed trains on Queens Blvd, but at least those come ever 2-3 minutes. But in Brooklyn, tunnels see far fewer riders and can handle fewer trains. The lines which truncate along Central Park West, and those which come in from Queens, are usually packed with straphangers, usually pushing subway capacity to its limits. From the beginning, the IND 8th Ave Line, along which the A runs, was designed as a massive passenger sorter, taking in riders from Washington Heights, Harlem, the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, and sifting them all throughout Manhattan. The A train formed the backbone of the entire Independent City-Owned Subway System, better known as the IND. It is, in fact, the longest subway line in the city (especially when it runs local late at night.) But while the A in Manhattan is a venerable workhorse, once it reaches Brooklyn, things change. Today, the A train runs from Washington Heights at the upper tip of Manhattan, to southern Queens and the Rockaway peninsula. When Duke Ellington wrote “ Take the A Train” he wasn’t talking about Brooklyn.
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