With subway trains still unable to get over or under the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan because of flooding and power problems, service between the two boroughs is by shuttle bus, with departures from the transportation hub at the Barclays Center and from Hewes Street on the border of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn.
Still, said Carol Jackson as she waited in a long line for a bus in front of the arena, “It’s a relief.”
Ms. Jackson, who lives in Crown Heights and took one of the first subways to tge Barclays Center to catch the bus to Manhattan, said her commute to her job at an Au Bon Pain near Bryant Park was a welcome change from Wednesday, when she had to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Barclays Center bus makes its first stop at Bowery and Delancey Streets, and continues up Third Avenue in Manhattan, making stops all the way up to 57th Street.
Raffique Lewis, 29, an electrician at the Marriott Hotel on Lexington Avenue who was returning to work for the first time since the storm struck, was daunted when he got out of the subway at Barclays Center from deeper in Brooklyn and saw lines for the buses to Manhattan stretching down the block.
“To come out and see this is just too much, the lines, it’s cold out,” he said. “I could’ve just waited until next week.”
Alberto Rivera, 46, a window washer, struggled to navigate the subway-to-bus transfer.
By 6:10 a.m., the bus line was being kept orderly by M.T.A. workers and the police, but it stretched for several blocks.