'We're trapped': Rockaway riders resentful and freezing amid subway shutdown

Rockaway residents were left out in the cold this week after the MTA began its four-month shutdown of the neighborhood’s only subway line.

The MTA began the closure last Friday night, terminating A train service at the Howard Beach-JFK Airport. Transit officials said they’re repairing the Broad Channel Bridge and viaducts crossing Jamaica Bay, which sustained heavy damage in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy. Service is scheduled to resume in May.

The MTA pitched the shutdown as a necessary sacrifice to keep the line running in the long term, and is offering free shuttle bus rides and discounted Long Island Rail Road fares to the estimated 9,000 daily riders affected by the closure.

But those alternatives offered little consolation to the droves of shivering Rockaway residents as they marched off of shuttle buses, toward the subway, in 20-degree weather on Thursday morning.

“I call [Rockaway] a little death trap, one way in, one way out,” 30-year-old commuter Amber Smith said after exiting a shuttle bus. “It’s horrible, but I live there, I don’t have a choice but to deal with the MTA.”

The free shuttle buses pick up riders at Mott Avenue, Beach 67th Street, Broad Channel and Beach 90th Street, and drop them off at the Howard Beach station. Additional express and select buses are also running to bring residents to other train stations like Rockaway Boulevard or Flatbush Avenue-Brooklyn College.

MTA officials say they need to shut down subway service to the Rockaways to complete crucial repairs on the line.

But several commuters making the transfer to the Howard Beach station said the closure still adds more than an hour to their commutes. They also criticized the MTA’s choice to shut down A service in the dead of winter.

The line is popular in the summer, when New Yorkers take the A to the beach. The decision to begin the closure this month means the service will be restored by May, but comes at the expense of locals who spent the week cursing the MTA.

“I’m pregnant. I live in Brooklyn and work all the way in Far Rockaway, and this is very inconvenient,” said Tenesha King-Watson, who was on her way to a shuttle bus. “They should have done this when it was a little warmer outside because this is not fair to people that have to commute to go to work.”

The MetroCard readers at a pair of turnstiles at the Howard Beach-JFK Airport station broke down on Thursday, creating a temporary bottleneck that MTA employees resolved by letting riders through the emergency gate for free. Inside the station, riders had to wait up to 20 minutes for a train.

A few stops further north, at Rockaway Boulevard, riders also said they were confused about where to board buses to get down to the peninsula. The bus stop is a block away from the station.

Rockaway resident Ihuome Anya, 55, said the service changes have been difficult for her. She said now leaves her home almost an hour earlier to get to work.

“We’re trapped!” Anya said. “What are they doing?”