Closing the L train’s Third Avenue station in Manhattan could save riders a combined 1,824 hours a day, according to an analysis by software engineer Joshua Wolk. The figure is a projection, not a measure of savings from an actual closure.
Wolk, 23, built the Stop the Stop website to make his case. He analyzed publicly available MTA data covering about 700 million trips from January through August, paired it with subway schedules and simulated the removal of 356 stations one at a time. Third Avenue produced the largest estimated net time saving, even when his model counted each added minute of walking as twice as burdensome as a minute aboard a train.
The station has an estimated 11,200 daily users and is about a five-minute walk from the busier First Avenue and Union Square stops. Wolk’s calculations also suggest that closing 138th Street-Grand Concourse could save 1,118 rider-hours a day, while removing some other stops would lengthen commutes substantially.
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