BMT Brighton Line - Service Patterns

Service Patterns

Since 1920, the primary service on the line has been through to Manhattan rather than over the tracks now used by the Franklin Avenue Shuttle. Local service has run all the time, while express service has generally been provided during weekday rush hours and later middays. Until the 1960s, all service on the line north of Prospect Park was labeled 1.

Standard local service ran through the Montague Street Tunnel and along the BMT Broadway Line local tracks; service instead crossed the Manhattan Bridge north tracks and ran express under Broadway during theatre hours (7:30 pm to midnight). Over the years, the local bridge service was expanded, and the local tunnel service ended up only from 6 am to 7 pm. Express service over the bridge to the Broadway express tracks, initially during rush hours, was also expanded to 6 am to 7 pm. The three patterns were assigned latter designations in the early 1960s: Q express via bridge, QT local via tunnel, and QB local via bridge.

The Chrystie Street Connection opened in late 1967, and almost all Brighton Line trains were removed from Broadway. The Q and QB were both combined with the D on the IND Sixth Avenue Line, running express during the day and local at other times. The daytime QT local was combined with the J and JJ to form the QJ, running through the tunnel to the BMT Nassau Street Line. The only Brighton-Broadway service was a new QB, running in the peak direction at rush hours on the local Brighton and express Broadway tracks. (Note that the old QB had run at non-peak times; this new QB had the same name and almost the same route but was a different service.)

The QJ's Brighton section was replaced with an extension of the M in 1973, but no other major changes were made until 1986, when reconstruction of the Manhattan Bridge subway tracks began. Though the same general service patterns remained on the Brighton Line, all trains were sent over the bridge and onto the Broadway or Sixth Avenue Line, depending on which set of tracks was open. From 1986 to 1988, the south side (Broadway) was in service, and the D continued to serve the line at all times, while the M was rerouted away from the Brighton Line, replaced by a greatly increased daytime Q service that absorbed the old QB as part of a 1986 elimination of double letters. For two years, the D and Q provided skip-stop service on the four-track portion of the Brighton Line during the day, Monday to Friday.

Bridge trains ran over the north side (Sixth Avenue) from 1988 to 2001; at this time, the skip-stop pattern was eliminated, and the D became a full-time local service, while the Q ran express during the day. The 2001 shifting of trains back to the south side (Broadway) led to the D only running north of Midtown Manhattan; the Brighton express portion of the D became the diamond Q. When both sides of the bridge were finally reopened in 2004, the diamond Q became an extension of the B rather than the D; the B had already run only during the day, and allowed the Q to remain a full-time local service. This Brighton-Broadway combination was made permanent, rather than a return to the pre-1986 patterns where most Brighton Line trains ran along Nassau Street or Sixth Avenue, because Brighton Line residents preferred Broadway service, and West End Line residents wanted full-time access to Grand Street on the Sixth Avenue Line.