The MTA will announce on Monday the official timeline for the long-awaited L train shutdown, the New York Times reports. The Canarsie tube—the tunnel running under the East River, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn—will be shut for eighteen months, beginning in January 2019.

Who wants to climb into this bowel bobbing in the river? With the likely L train shutdown looming in 2019—affecting 250,000 people who commute between Manhattan and Brooklyn daily—it’s time to look at possible solutions. One solution is turning parts of 14th Street into a bus, bicycle, and pedestrian only zone. And then, there’s this:

Phew! Another April Fools’ Day come and gone. Did you make it through without falling for one of those hilarious pranks that brands, blogs, and businesses love to spring on us each year? Wait—don’t answer yet. Maybe you got punked without even knowing it! Here are some of today’s best practical jokes that you might have missed.

How cash-strapped is the MTA? Enough to go after serial train thief Darius McCollum, who recently sold the movie rights to his life story, in an effort to wrest any profits from the film away from him.

In his State of the City speech on Thursday—attendance at which his administration is working very diligently to limit to friendly faces only—Mayor Bill de Blasio will unveil, among other things, his proposal to build a streetcar line along the East River, connecting Sunset Park, Brooklyn, with Astoria, Queens.

Amid all of humanity’s fantastical projections of future technology, one stands out: we may live to see a day when it is impossible to piss between moving New York City subway cars.

Good news for people who hate the people of Brooklyn, or at least the idea of the people of Brooklyn: Gothamist reports that forthcoming Hurricane Sandy-related repairs to the the L train, which connects Williamsburg to Manhattan, could shut the line down for at least three years.

Darius McCollum, a legendary thief who has been arrested 29 times for transit-related offenses, was picked up again in Brooklyn Wednesday, the New York Post reports—this time for stealing a Greyhound bus from the Port Authority depot.

For 90 minutes this morning, Long Island Rail Road service was suspended coming into and going out of Penn Station due to “signal trouble.” For 90 minutes this morning, LIRR riders inundated the E, 7, and 2/3 subway lines, as the MTA cross-honored their LIRR fares. For 90 minutes this morning, Satan was released from his prison, deceiving the nations in the four corners of the earth—LIRR and MTA—to gather them for battle.

The NYPD is seeking a man who allegedly “masturbated to completion” on an uptown A train Friday morning while covering his lap with a black baseball cap. Not covering it well enough, apparently, because the woman who reported him says she distinctly saw his penis. She also sent Gothamist this video of the man apparently pleasuring himself on a packed train:

Weeks ago, reeling from a night of booze and bad decisions, I ventured to a local Bayou-themed restaurant in search of comfort food. I wanted to absorb the last of the alcohol that remained from just hours before, fully determined to get rid of my hangover. When you live alone, this is not an uncommon practice. I often eat out by myself—it’s hard to wait on friends to make brunch plans when all you want to do is devour a plate of syrup-coated waffles—so it wasn’t strange when the bartender and the gray-haired gentleman to my right decided to include me in their conversation. “What do you think?” he said. They had been discussing rising property values in the neighborhood, and the ills of gentrification. The bartender mentioned how a small patch of dirt between two brownstones, just blocks from the restaurant and my apartment, was going for $2 million. “There was also that old gas station in Crown Heights that sold for 30 million recently,” she said. “How is anybody expected to live here now? It’s just too much.”

Yesterday morning, between 9:30 and 9:40 a.m. (yes, I was running late to work) I was the victim of sexual misconduct at the Fulton Street subway stop, at the exit near Fulton and William streets. The MTA and the NYPD failed to provide substantial measures in responding to and reporting the incident.

Fifty-two-year-old Michael Kneitel is a man of principle. He will not rest until the $75 ticket he received for using the door between subway cars to escape a pissing passenger is overturned.

New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in yet another bind. If state lawmakers do not agree to fund the remainder of the MTA’s five-year capital plan, the deadline for which is coming up in June, there may be a need to increase fares and tolls by 15 percent in order to make ends meet.

Two MTA bus drivers were arrested in Midtown on Friday evening after getting out of their vehicles and fighting in the street, The New York Post reports.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo officially shut New York City's subway system down Monday night in anticipation of a potentially "crippling" blizzard, but according to reports, the trains are still running—city residents just can't ride them.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority voted on Thursday to raise the price of single-ride Metrocards on subways and buses by an additional 25 cents, making a trip anywhere in New York City cost $2.75. When will the madness stop?

The subway conductor allegedly attacked by NYPD officer Mirjan Lolja on a Bronx subway platform says the cop tried to escape by train after throwing her to the ground and choking her. The woman anonymously told the New York Daily News, "I believe the only thing that saved me was the train coming into the station."

NYPD officer Mirjan Lolja turned himself in to a Harlem precinct this week after security camera footage of him fleeing a Bronx subway station, the scene of an alleged attack on an MTA employee, aired on the news.

While on the way to the bus depot in Queens, an MTA bus driver allegedly pulled over his bus when he spotted a man who he says had been involved in a love triangle with his wife. When the bus was pulled over, the driver stabbed the man in the forearm, police say.