Hurricane Sandy caused a lot of physical damage to properties and psychological damage to people. Lives were lost. Properties were ruined, including homes and tunnels. After four long years, some people are still recovering and some properties are still not fixed; subway tunnel is one of them. The Canarsie Tunnel under the East River that allows L train to transport over 200,000 a day between Brooklyn and Manhattan is due to close for repair maintenance.

The L train’s Canarsie Line was flooded with saltwater and severely damaged during the hurricane in 2012. The seven-mile long tunnel suffered extensive damage to tracks, signals, switches, power cables, signal cables, communication cables, lighting and more. It allows 225,000 people to move around between Manhattan and Brooklyn every day, more people than the daily ridership of Baltimore, LA and Miami’s system combined. Its daily ridership along the entire lone is 400,000, which more than doubled since 1990. The massive reconstruction work is expected to take 18 months under full closure no sooner than 2019.

The L Trainpocalypse is going to be incredibly painful for residents, but what about the local businesses? Williamsburg is the epicenter of Brooklyn as the fashionable worldwide brand. The streets are filled with inventive restaurants, bars and eclectic shops. It is possible weekday lunch crowd may be the same as before, but the night time dinner crowd may be smaller, affecting restaurants and bars the most.

The small businesses who depend on the influx of rider may be the biggest losers of the scheduled apocalypse. The biggest loser in terms of location would be Bedford Avenue since it relies more on tourism. Small business on Bedford avenue will be the hardest hit.

I plan to interview business managers/owners at these restaurants and bars on Beford Avenue. I will ask how their businesses might be disrupted by the Trainpocalypse and how post- trainpocalypse might affect. Post-trainpocalypse could mean more attractive train stations and lines that could reduce the travel time. The after-math affects can be extremely positive, offsetting the losses incurred during the trainpocalypse quickly.

I will not ask this, but if the interviewee directly mentions real estate in any way, I will plan to interview real-estate people, especially in commercial real estate industry. I plan to ask them how it may affect the real estate market in Williamsburg, including the listed homes for sale and the lease agreements range from a year to 10 years. How the 5-10 year leases will be affected compared to a year or two leases.

In addition to mangers/owners interview, I plan to interview one restaurant/bar customer who resides in Williamsburg and one who does not reside in the neighborhood. I plan to get to get know how the scheduled maintenance affects their plans. I’m targeting millennials and generation Y, since they are more likely to spend and go out.

I plan to start the podcast by talking about Hurricane and how it affects the communities in NYC, especially the train tunnels. From there, I transit to the MTA’s plan to repair the tunnel. And from there, I will put talk more about how it may impact the residents and businesses. I will start with the manager/owner’s interview. If they mention real-estate, then I transit to the interview of someone who works in the real estate industry. Then transit to the customer interviews. Finally, I will conclude up the podcast. In addition to all of that, I will add one or two photos that could grab the reader’s attention.

Brace Yourselves. Trainpocalypse Is Coming.