Trolley Thursday 12/11/20 - A Brief History of the New York Subways and Elevateds, Part 2

Welcome back to Part 2 of our New York Subway and Elevated excursion! On Tuesday, we covered the early independent histories of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) and how both built up Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx as their own public transit empires. Like all good things though, private transit enterprises were not long for this world and both companies soon found themselves under public city control. Could a city as big and diverse as New York really run their own mass transit, and run it well? All of this and more in today's Trolley Thursday, all about the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA).

The Fall of Empires in the Empire State

Four historic New York city trains line up at Brighton Beach, representing
(from left to right): the NYMTA, the BRT, the BMT, and the IND.
(New York Transit Museum)

On the eve of World War II, three companies ran Manhattan's elevated and underground railways: the aforementioned IRT and BRT (now the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation, or BMT), and a third named the Independent Subway System (IND). The IND, despite its name, was actually operated by the New York City Board of Transportation (BoT), and in June 1940, the BoT took immediate control of the BMT and IRT after both companies failed to raise fares and get their finances in order under the restrictive "Dual Contract" system of March 19, 1913. The new controlling organization was publicly known as the MTA New York City Transit, which for the purposes of this report will be referred to as the "MTA" for short.

A New York Evening World
headline announcing the new
"Dual Contract".
(The Bowery Boys)

On first glance, the Dual Contracts promised great development for New York's elevated systems: new lines would be built that facilitated new inner-city suburbs and civic movement, a cut of the profits made returning to the city of New York, and the city and companies each would share the burden of rehabilitating old lines as well as constructing new ones. However, on the other hand, the Dual Contract also gave the city the ability to revoke ownership and running privileges from the IRT and BMT, and fares were kept at a steady cost of 5 cents, which meant during the inflation crisis following World War I, that single nickel cost hurt the transit companies more than it did the pocketbooks of their riders. Two unsuccessful attempts to raise the fare (which included IRT going to the Supreme Court to essentially buck the Dual Contracts and raise the fare to 7 cents) ended with both companies in disgrace, which meant it was easy for the upstart IND (which was established in 1932) to pick up the pieces.

One Size Doesn't Fit All

After the New York BoT took over the BMT and IRT, the two companies were split off into two distinct divisions. The IRT lines were rebranded the "A" Division, while the IND and BMT lines were combined into the "B" Division. As much of the rapid transit expansion occurred under a private enterprise, and thus service redundancies and deferred maintenance was rife, the city made it a goal to both consolidate the companies and cut redundant lines where necessary. However, this process of consolidation and reorganization was hampered by one small problem: both divisions were almost incompatible with one another.

A tight squeeze on 14th Street/Union Square on the "4" service,
one of seven lines to converge here on the NYMTA's "A" Division.
(Henry Perlman)

An ex-IND "Arnine" set swings its immense length
on an excursion trip out of Brighton Beach station, 2015.
(New York Transit Museum)

When the Dual Contracts were signed in 1913, the popular construction and upgrade style of the two companies was to elevated railway dimensions: slender, short cars for tight turns and closer platforms. The IRT followed this style religiously, as it had most of the elevated lines in New York City, while the IND and BMT trains cars were much longer and made for a wider gap between platforms. Both companies insisted one was doing this to screw with the other, yet IRT was later forced to upgrade certain sections of line to support the trains of the IND and BMT. As most of A Division's older stations were situated closer to Manhattan's city center, it was not as easy to upgrade the stations with wider platforms for through service. Thus, after this development, most new system upgrades focused on the much wider B division. 

New Lines and Other Closures

A New York City Transit token from 1970.
Its worth was 30 cents.
(Untapped New York)

While New York City had hoped municipal control of their rapid transit meant increased profits going to the city without raising the fares above 5 cents, this didn't happen. After all, any economics student or accountant worth their salt is going to believe inflation is a thing, and 5 cents didn't exactly have any buying power in 1942 than it did in 1913. Nevertheless, World War II still brought some reprieve to the losses incurred by the city's new public transit division, with an all-time high of 8.9 million fares being counted on December 23, 1946. After the war, the city finally realized inflation was a thing and raised the fare to 10 cents in 1947, then 15 cents in 1953.

On the more physical side of the railways, and despite the wartime traffic boom, lines began to close as the MTA was cutting services where it saw fit. One such major closure was the Second Avenue Line on June 13, 1942 after rife service discontinuations such as cutting north service back to 59th Street and eliminating evening and weekend trains altogether. Other lines to go included the original IRT Ninth Avenue Line on June 11, 1940 (the first line to be completely dismantled), portions of the BMT Fifth Avenue Line over the Brooklyn Bridge on September 15, 1941, and the BMT Fulton Street Line on June 1, 1940, when it was diverted onto the newly-opened IND Fulton Street Subway at Rockaway Avenue.

Against an art deco backdrop, a Second Avenue
Elevated train rumbles its way through the city in
the late 1930s/early 1940s.
(Ephemeral New York)

The cars were also falling apart as well. Discounting Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's comments of Brooklyn's streetcars being "as dead as sailing ships", much of the MTA's inherited fleet of rolling stock were from the first subway fleet of 1904, with B Division's BMT fleet being not that much younger. As the city grew, new demands for rolling stock and station upgrades were rising, and in 1946, Mayor William O'Dwyer approved an extension to six stations along the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line to accommodate ten-car trains, costing a total of $423,000 for the time. (I'll cover the specifics of the fleet next week.) New cars to fit these platforms wouldn't be delivered until 1948 to 1965, which meant over 6,000 cars from various manufacturers replaced the entirety of A and B Division's pre-war fleet.

The only two new lines to open were the IND Rockaway Line and the IRT Dyre Avenue Line in 1950 and 1941, respectively. The Rockaway Line was originally a heavy-rail commuter line of the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) until the bridge over Jamaica Bay burned in 1949 burned and the line was abandoned shortly after. The city purchased the line in 1952 and set about rebuilding and converting the line for subway use, which opened officially in 1956 as an extension of the famous "A" train from Harlem to Bedford-Stuyvesant. The Dyre Avenue Line was a branch of the original IRT White Plains Road line and the only remnant of the New York, Westchester & Boston Railway (a New Haven-controlled commuter railway in the South Bronx) left operating. It also holds the distinction of being mostly at-grade, with the right of way remaining mostly unchanged. 

Iconic Gun Hill Road Station on the IRT Dyre Avenue Line in an undated photo.
(Forgotten-NY.com)

A 1985 brochure explaining
the relettering of B Division's
double-letter servicces.
(NYMTA)

It was around this time, in the period of rebuilding and improvement after WWII, that the MTA rapid transit lines also gained their more familiar numbers and letters. Starting in 1948, all "A" Division trains were now numbered services (1-7) and all "B" Division trains were IND-lettered services with double letters being local stopping trains and single letter trains being limited-stop expresses. After connection of the BMT and IND tracks at Chrystie Street in the mid 1950s, the letters extended to old BMT trains (which were also originally numbered). In 1967, the B division was again amended with brand new letters, with all but one service (the EE "Broadway Local") retaining its double-lettered designation.

Graffiti, Crime, and Boomboxes

As the NYCTA entered the bright and shining future of the 1960s, it was becoming clear that the rapid transit was lagging far behind. More people began using the subways and maintenance was becoming deferred, leading to one chairman of the NYCTA, Charles Patterson, proposing to remove the seats on the heavily-congested 42nd Street Shuttle service to increase crush capacity. New service intervals were also placed along the system starting in 1957, with the maximum being 20 minutes for late night services. 

A planning map of the 1969 "Program For Action" in New York City to expand the subway.
(NYMTA)

A planned map of the current Second
Avenue Subway, with future phases
for expansion.
(by vanshnookenraggen)

The biggest boost to attend to some of the city's underlying transit deterioration came in 1968, when the "Program For Action" under Mayor John Lindsay's tenure allocated $1.6 billion of city and federal funds (the ".6" came from the US government) to expand the subways over the next decade. This also included heavy reduction of redundant subway services and filling in the major service gaps following the heavy closure of much of the city's subway lines. Phase 1 involved supplanting the IND Queens Boulevard and IRT Lexington Avenue Line (another original subway) with new lines (like the Second Avenue Subway) and modern interlocking, while Phase 2 would have involved finishing the Second Avenue Subway and building a new subway under Park Avenue at the Third Avenue Elevated in the Bronx. Unfortunately, not even Phase 1 was completed as the city was broke just halfway through the program in 1975. 

As if that wasn't enough, Mayor Lindsay also got to behold the newest epidemic in New York's subways: graffiti. The decline of the subways went hand-in-hand with the artful tagging of New York City subway cars, which came as a consequence of the city lowering the transit budget and, thus, less and less allocated resources to maintain the cars. An acid solution was tried in 1972 at Mayor Lindsay's insistence on this "war on graffiti", but this program was stopped in 1973, with a following trial the next year proving detrimental to the fleet's upkeep. It's at this point the transit system more resembled a prison, with tracks guarded by increased security presence, cameras, and barbed wire fences, gaining the subway a seedy reputation.

A conductor briefly peeks out of his compartment to
artfully critique the unwanted makeover of his train.
(Wall Street Journal)

A famous photo feature in the New York Daily News
of a passenger enjoying a reprieve in a graffiti-filled,
filthy subway car.
(New York Daily News)

The late 1970s and early 1980s ramped up the MTA's dangerous reputation, with chairman Richard Ravitch outright stating even he was afraid of the subway. He wasn't alone, as plenty of rogue "window-smashing" felonies, murders, and muggers lurked under the city streets, and the increased police presence meant plenty of wrongful convictions and arrests were rife, leading to even more civic animosity. This culminated on December 22, 1984, when Bernhard Goetz shot four young African American men from the Bronx on a subway train. Infamously dubbed the "Subway Vigilante", he came to represent both the city's frustrations with crime on the transit, and problems with the transit in general. 

Public Transit on the Rise

63rd Street Tunnel under construction in 1989, where
it would remain unconnected across the river to Queens
until 2001.
(Alchetron)

In the 1990s, the NYCTA finally got some relief when mayor David Dinkins' high-tax campaign meant more money was now being put towards subway care like graffiti elimination and higher car maintenance. This had both good and bad effects, as while graffiti trains were a thing of the past, the infamous IND 63rd Street Line's "Tunnel to Nowhere" left plenty with a sour taste in their mouths and their wallets. The effects of Mayor Rudy Giuliani cutting $400 million from the MTA's budged in 1994 (just after he took office) did hurt the system plenty, as did the budget being lowered in the late 1990s, but nothing could prepare the MTA for its biggest hit just after the turn of the century.

On September 11, 2001, two planes struck and leveled the World Trade Center in New York City. When the "Twin Towers" came down, it crushed the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line below it, temporarily ending any service running between Chambers and Rector Street, along with Cortland Street's tunnel. On the A Division, the 1 train was able to resume modified service via New Lots Avenue on September 19, 2001, and all other trains (1, 2, 3, and 4) resumed normal service the next year. As New York struggled to rebuild following the terrorist attack, so did its rapid transit, with Cortlandt Street Station finally reopening to subway service on September 8, 2018.

Cortlandt Street Station following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
(Public Domain)

New York's Subway, in the modern day.
(Gotham Gazette)

Now in the 21st century, New York's subways are more underfunded and maintenance-deferred than ever, especially after Hurricane Sandy damaged much of the subway lines around the city. This meant reconfiguration of the system was in order, which further deteriorated service along with the lack of money, high fares, and service delays. This crisis culminated in 2017, when only 65% of weekday trains managed to get to their destinations on time. There were also derailments, track fires, and overcrowding incidents plenty, putting New York in the running for "Worst Public Transit System in America" with perennial winner Boston. As of this writing, the subway is currently crippled by the COVID-19 Pandemic, but only time will tell if it can rise again to the nostalgic glory it once was.

A Century of History at Work

Well that was sad. Let's try not end it on a sad note, though.

The "Train of Many Colors" passes Citi Field (formerly Shea Stadium)
in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, for the 50th anniversary of the 1964 
World's Fair in 2014.
(Fred G)

A train on display at the New York Transit Museum.
(New York Transit Museum)

One of the best things created by the NYCTA is the "Nostalgia Train" or "Train of Many Colors", a special excursion of retired and historic cars operated in conjunction with the New York Transit Museum. For the price of a regular subway fare, passengers could ride aboard historic IRT, BMT, or NYMTA R-Cars ranging from movie-famous trains to the iconic World's Fair R33 cars from 1964. Many of the cars rolling around the New York subway or elevated at any time could also be seen at the Transit Museum's location at the former Court Street Station, originally a local terminal of the IND Fulton Street Line. When the line closed on June 1, 1946, it was used as a film set for movies like both adaptations of "The Taking of Pelham 123", "Guilty Bystander", and TV shows like "Life on Mars." The museum officially opened on July 4, 1976, with the admission being one subway token, and the connection at Schermerhorn Street remains active for the museum to access the MTA mainline. It's certainly a destination for this motorman, and it should also be a destination for you, the reader.

Thank you for reading today's (late) Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included the New York City Transit Museum, which is an organization you should definitely think about supporting. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by Brian Clough and can be found on his site, Banks of the Susquehanna. On Tuesday, we look at the different car types of the IRT and BMT Lines! For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!