Weekend Subway: J and M Trains Have No Manhattan Service — and the Rest of the Map Is a Green Light
One corridor carries the weekend: J and M trains stop at Myrtle Avenue from 3:45 AM Saturday to 10 PM Sunday for the Marcy Avenue switch replacement, with shuttle buses bridging to Delancey Street. Almost everywhere else, the MTA's weekend map is unusually quiet.
The weekend's one big change is on the Williamsburg corridor. From 3:45 AM Saturday to 10 PM Sunday, J and M trains do not run between Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn and Manhattan while the MTA replaces tracks and switches around Marcy Avenue — switches the agency says date to the end of their useful life. J trains run between Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer and Myrtle Avenue only; M trains run in two sections, every 20 minutes; and at Myrtle Avenue, all J and M trains board from the Manhattan-bound platform. Free shuttle buses replace J trains between Myrtle Avenue-Broadway and Delancey Street-Essex Street, and the MTA points daytime and evening riders between Williamsburg and the Lower East Side to the B39 bus. This is one of the five listed shutdown weekends for the project, which run through November 23.
Outside that corridor, the weekend is as close to clear as this system gets. The Brooklyn Heights weekend preview calls it a green light weekend — no planned cancellations, route changes or station skips directly affecting its local stations from late Friday through early Monday. Riders should still note the week that follows it: from Monday Nov. 9 through Friday Nov. 13, late nights to early mornings, 4 train service is suspended in both directions between Grand Central-42nd Street and Utica Avenue-New Lots Avenue, with 3 trains running into Brooklyn in the 4's place.
Friday afternoon's live board, read at 17:47 UTC, is down to six alerts — and the day's one delay is gone: the A trains' South Channel Bridge delay from the midday board has cleared. What remains is planned work: downtown 1 trains skip 125th Street; Manhattan-bound F trains in Brooklyn skip Avenue P, Avenue N, Bay Parkway and Avenue I, with all trains at 18th Avenue boarding from the Coney Island-bound platform and F service below Church Avenue running less frequently; Flushing-bound 7 trains skip 52nd and 69th Streets, with Woodside-61st Street boarding from the Manhattan-bound platform; the Staten Island Railway's New Dorp east-end entrance stays closed; E and F riders enter 5th Avenue/53rd Street at Fifth Avenue only; and Riverdale's north-end access remains restricted at West 255th Street.
The practical read for the weekend is simple. If your trip crosses the East River on the J or M, build the shuttle-bus or B39 transfer into the plan and add time at Myrtle Avenue. If it does not, this is one of the fall's quieter weekends underground — and the last quiet one for the 4 line's riders before the late-night work begins Monday.
