The L train shutdown is about seven months away. Over 275,000 New Yorkers have to figure out an alternative way to get to Manhattan from April 2019 to sometime in 2020. You can read more about the MTA and DOT’s plan here, but a group of Brooklynites have another plan in the works, and it involves WiFi, charging ports, and breakfast!
The New L is a luxury shuttle van service: for $155 a month, it will bring trainless Brooklyn folks from their doorstep across the bridge into Manhattan, and provide locally sourced breakfast items. The shuttle will run Monday through Friday, starting in April 2019. They are partnering with “local bus, shuttle, and limo companies that have tens of thousands of vehicles”, in order to meet the high demand of people who need to get to Manhattan and give work to drivers who are struggling in the gig economy. The shuttle will only take customers from Brooklyn into Manhattan, not back into BK after work.
We at Go Green BK are intrigued. $155 a month compares to $121 for a monthly East River Ferry Pass or monthly MetroCard. The New L monthly pass does not offer weekend service and is $34 more expensive. On the other hand, The New L offers breakfast, cushy service and pickup service at your door.
Interview with Jaime Getto, Founder and President of The New L
GG: Please tell us about The New L.
Jaime: There needs to be affordable and ideally, public solutions available to help mitigate transit during the shutdown. The reality is that the MTA has failed to provide suitable alternatives. The mission of The New L is to increase accessibility to transit for all Brooklynites during the L train shutdown. We’re launching with a fleet of shuttles that will take Brooklyn residents into Manhattan, Monday through Friday, and we will rapidly expand into a more affordable offering that will shuttle residents to other nearby subways.
The MTA assumes 75-85% of the affected residents will simply take other subways. If that were the case, chaos would ensue in these already overcrowded subways. We are looking to help mitigate this issue by providing multiple offerings. We are also hoping that our initiative encourages the MTA to kick things into high gear, and perhaps offer more public buses that can provide suitable coverage for the hundreds of thousands of affected riders.
GG: I am an L train resident, and this seems like it might be a good alternative after the shutdown. How many shuttles would you run per hour ? Would you stop at all the subway stations? Or would you just pick people up at Bedford and bring them across the river to First Avenue?
Jaime: We are not mirroring L train stops. Group drop offs will be optimized for location, so hopefully we won’t just be addressing the immediate issue and it will be a slightly improved commute. If there is demand in an affected area, we will build the appropriate routes. Riders will be picked up at their doorstep, and optimal drop off points will be calculated based on riders’ desired drop off locations.
The beauty of our model is that it’s dynamic. We are working with existing, registered fleets, so these vehicles already exist and are looking to be put to use, as they struggle to compete with the Ubers and Lyfts of the world. The actual number of daily rides will be based on rider demand.
GG: I see that you describe the vehicles as “luxury vans”. How large are these vehicles, in terms of number of seats? I ask because the folks have expressed concerns about the sheer volume of vehicles (cars, vans, buses) that may clog the Williamsburg Bridge.
Jaime: Our core offering will consist of 14 passenger sprinter vans. Our hope is that we’re decreasing the number of vehicles on the road by condensing number of passengers per vehicle. Many of our riders would have likely utilized services like UberPool, perhaps with 4 passengers in a vehicle that would have qualified for HOV. We’re compacting 14 (people) per vehicle.
GG: What is your greatest competition?
Jaime: I hope that our greatest competition will be public transit, and that we can ultimately cease operations! This will run solely for the duration of the shutdown, until the MTA provides a suitable transit offering. I’m in alignment with the view that people should take more public transit. In a perfect world the MTA would provide more alternatives like buses. But unfortunately the math is so incredibly off with what’s being provided.
GG: If the L were to shut down today, do you have everything in place to start your operation immediately?
Jaime: Yes. Within 14 business days, we could confidently get up and running if needed. It’s a matter of building the appropriate routes using the data points we’ve collected thus far. We will never own a vehicle, thus will not need to register as a fleet. We’re putting existing, underutilized & most importantly, registered fleets to work. The beauty of our model is it allows us to scale up and down based on demand.
GG: What is your background and that of your team?
Jaime: My background is in helping build tech startups, everything from operations to sales and marketing. I specialize in acquisition marketing, and run a performance marketing team at a tech company based in NYC called Vettery. We like to think of the The New L team as more of a collective than structured as a formal startup team. There are currently 5 of us. We’re a group of BK residents that came together to solve a critical issue. The team’s background ranges cross-industry, including transportation, with specialities in Design, Sales, and Project Management.
GG: And finally, I’m curious as to how your product differs from a monthly pass from existing private transportation providers including Uber, Lyft or Chariot.
Jaime: Uber and Lyft would require ordering a car each morning, and also have surge pricing. Our model is a flat monthly fee, where you are guaranteed a seat on board a vehicle. You do not have to wake up each morning, hope a car is available, and hope that prices aren’t surging out of control. Our model best aligns with Chariot. We differ from Chariot in that they do not currently serve all of the affected areas (they currently only operate in Williamsburg and Greenpoint).
The New L’s Premiere
Go Green BK associate Juliana Peck attended the “inaugural ride” from the Lower East Side to Bushwick and kickoff party last Thursday, September 13th.
“We choose drivers mostly through referral, and offer a good place to work with a sort of built in mentorship community with experienced drivers. Drivers play an important role in people’s lives. You are in a fairly intimate setting often with the same people daily, so you have to get to know them as things happen in their lives, and anticipate their needs.” – Abe, Head of Driver Success
“Traffic will be bad, yes, but traffic is always bad. But in this case the drivers have the ability to make judgments when encountering problems. I think it will be successful. Who wouldn’t want to get to work in an Escalade?” – Antonio, Driver
To find out more about The New L, check out their website here. We look forward to seeing how this venture continues to develop as April approaches.