Flushing Avenue Station: A Bed-Stuy Stop with 19th-Century Roots and a Delayed Accessibility Plan

At the meeting point of Flushing Avenue and Broadway, the Flushing Avenue station serves Bedford–Stuyvesant on the BMT Jamaica Line. It is an elevated local stop, offering a connection to the J and M trains and providing a useful transit link through central Brooklyn.

The J serves the station throughout the day, with one important exception: it does not stop there during weekday peak periods when trains are traveling in the peak direction. The M stops at Flushing Avenue at all times except late nights. The Z skips the station whenever that service operates, so riders should check the specific train designation before boarding.

The station’s history reaches back to the earliest era of Brooklyn’s elevated railways. It opened on June 25, 1888, as the Union Elevated Railroad extended its route above Broadway from Gates Avenue northwest to Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg. At the time, the Union line was leased to the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad, and the new segment formed part of a branch connected to the existing Lexington Avenue Elevated.

When the Flushing Avenue stop opened, the Lexington Avenue Elevated ended at Van Siclen Avenue. Broadway trains ran between Driggs Avenue and Van Siclen Avenue, creating a route across several Brooklyn neighborhoods. The Broadway Elevated reached Broadway Ferry less than a month later, on July 14, 1888.

The station’s rail connections changed again after the Williamsburg Bridge tracks opened in 1908. Trains were then rerouted across the bridge west of Marcy Avenue, linking the Brooklyn elevated system with Manhattan-bound service over the East River.

Accessibility has also been part of the station’s more recent story. In December 2021, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced plans to install wide-aisle fare gates for disabled passengers at five subway stations, including Flushing Avenue. The work was initially expected by the middle of 2022, but implementation was delayed. The available information does not provide a completed installation date or a newer timetable.

For riders who depend on the station, that distinction matters: train service information and station-access improvements are separate questions. Flushing Avenue remains a J and M stop with a long place in Brooklyn’s transit history, while the status of the proposed wide-aisle gates remains unresolved in the available record.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Flushing Avenue station (BMT Jamaica Line)” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flushing_Avenue_station_(BMT_Jamaica_Line) The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://maps.google.com/?ll=40.700666,-73.942355&spn=0.006157,0.011061&layer=c&cbll=40.700665,-73.942364&panoid=bNvFM-goxtXPkITJeHOjsw&cbp=12,110.6,,0,4.63&t=m&z=17 - https://web.archive.org/web/20121108033658/http://www.stationreporter.net/jtrain.htm - https://web.archive.org/web/20100922060746/http://www.stationreporter.net/mxtrain.htm - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7003975,-73.9412689,3a,75y,11.28h,85.54t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s-Lt17KgicyBk%2FWGxHOiOBszI%2FAAAAAAAAX90%2F5r6ayIus86EWidrPoRkuYMou8JwDZul4wCLIB!2e4!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-Lt17KgicyBk%2FWGxHOiOBszI%2FAAAAAAAAX90%2F5r6ayIus86EWidrPoRkuYMou8JwDZul4wCLIB%2Fw203-h100-p-k-no%2F!7i8000!8i4000!4m3!8m2!3m1!1e1 - https://web.archive.org/web/20110606073320/http://mta.info/mta/aft/permanentart/permart.html?agency=nyct&line=J&station=14&xdev=1440 - https://web.archive.org/web/20170722231005/http://gothamist.com/2017/07/22/j_train_entrance_reopens_decades_af.php Image rights Photograph description: Modern Elevators Now Open at Flushing Av Station Creator: Metropolitan Transportation Authority. License: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFlushing_Av_new_elevator_vc.jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.