Archive for November, 2010
Nov
04
Pondering the allure of the abandoned
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The Transit Museum conducts MTA-sanctioned tours of the abandoned City Hall stop for museum members. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
As a kid of New York growing up near Broadway on the Upper West Side, I knew about the 91st St. subway station, which closed 34 years before I was even born, long before I had a sense of the subway system as a whole. My parents told me how there used to be a 1 train stop — then the IRT local — on the same corner as my childhood apartment building. I knew that if you peered hard enough into the dark, you could see this graffiti-covered, trash-strewn relic of another era, and my parents told me that when the 96th St. station finally reached 94th St., the 200-foot stop was deemed unnecessary. It shut with little public fanfare.
That 91st St. station was always an oddity in the system. As Joseph Brennan described at his Abandoned Stations site, “A station at 91 St was provided solely to avoid a ten block stretch without stations. The neighboring stations were located at the wide crosstown streets 86 St and 96 St, which had no crosstown car or bus service in 1904, but which were considered to be likely candidates once the area became more developed. It was awkward because while ten blocks was a long distance, the resulting five blocks was closer than any interstation distance north of 33 St.”
Today, the 91st St. station exists as nothing special. Before 9/11, the Transit Museum conducted tours of the stop, and the photos show neglect and destruction appropriate for a station that hasn’t seen revenue service since the waning days of the Eisenhower Administration. There’s no need for this station, and so it, like many others, passes into the forgotten realm of New York City subway history.
Earlier this week, that history exploded onto the front pages of The New York Times when the Underbelly Project, my latest subway obsession, became public. Not technically located in an abandoned station, the street art gallery inaccessible to anyone but the select and the daring inhabits a shell station built off of the IND Crosstown’s Broadway stop that has been waiting for trains to pass through it since the early 1930s. The subway, though, will never come to the South 4th St. station, once the six-track centerpiece for the grand plan we now call the IND Second System. Instead, a massive display of street art that has truly and utterly captured my imagination now lives there, and the MTA says that, while it will work to shore of this abandoned station’s security, it won’t erase the art.
Revok and Ceaze's contribution to the Underbelly Project gallery. (Photo by flickr user Vandalog)
Why, I wonder, am I so drawn to this story? The answer I believe lies in the mystery of the station, nostalgia for an era of old when now-abandoned subway stations were open and the sweet romance of the way the city used to plan on a grand scale. By and large, the city’s abandoned subway stations are few and far between. For a public transit system with 468 active stations, New York City’s system has few hidden spots. The City Hall stop, visible to those who ride the 6 train around the loop and enjoy the perks of Transit Museum membership, is probably the most famous, but others — the 18th St. station on the East Side IRT, the Myrtle Ave. stop-turned-Masstransiscope just north of DeKalb Ave., the entire unnecessary Worth St. stop — are out there.
The abandoned subway stops and unused lower levels — 42nd St. and 8th Ave., Bergen St. and 9th Ave. in Brooklyn — and antique walls remind us of the city’s past. The subway’s planners made mistakes. They built too many stops that couldn’t handle the appropriate number of riders a few years or decades after opening. They put stations too close together and constructed bi-level stops where they weren’t needed. In a few select spots around the city in the 1930s, they even built station shells for subway routes that never materialized. Each and every vacant spot is a reminder of a bygone era in the city’s transit history.
This week, it will become harder for the urban adventurers to find these hidden gems. The MTA and the NYPD are working to ensure that access to the abandoned and forgotten stations isn’t as easy as it was for the two years while street artists toiled away at the Underbelly Project work. Hidden access points will be sealed, fences will be mended. Yet, these stations are out there, decaying reminders of another age. History may not remember them, but those of us who know and appreciate transit history will. With their work this week, the Underbelly Project and its slate of artists made sure that many more of us now know that history.
Nov
03
Infighting impacting TWU cohesion
Posted by: | CommentsIn early October, I briefly touched upon a simmering dispute at the TWU between union president John Samuelsen and the then-Secretary-Treasurer Izzy Rivera. The two were engaged in a war of words over the vote to retain healthcare benefits for union members who have lost their jobs, and Rivera was ousted from his position by a 37-1 vote.
Now, says The Post, the dispute between the two has simmered over, and the Department of Labor is now involved. Tom Namako has more on the fight between Samuelsen and the man who once wanted his job:
Agents at the US Department of Labor are now investigating whether recently ousted treasurer Israel “Izzy” Rivera steered a contract worth more than $100,000 to his lover, a Xerox office-supplies agent, who scored commissions, sources said.
The allegations come a day after The Post reported that John Samuelsen, president of the 35,000-member Transport Workers Union Local 100, is being probed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for allegedly misusing the union’s $400,000 pot of political money. The probes are part of an escalating feud between Samuelsen and Rivera, who accuse each other of taking their grievances to authorities.
Rank-and-file workers say the infighting is ripping the union to shreds. “We’re paying them big salaries and they’re busy fighting each other and not the MTA,” said one laborer who knows several people who were laid off this year.
For more on the investigation into Samuelsen, check out this report. He and the TWU are reported being investigated for improper donations to state Democratic campaign committees; Ed Potosnak, a congressional hopeful in New Jersey; grocery purchases; and payments to Gov. David Paterson’s father for legal and consulting services.
“This is all political nonsense,” Samuelsen said yesterda. “I’m in charge of the political-action committee, and we made contributions to Senate and Assembly members…Everything I’ve done was done responsibly and within the boundaries of the union’s constitution.”
The in-fighting here is a further show of the TWU’s tenuous grasp on its internal politics. Never the most organized union, the TWU has spent the first decade of the 2000s dealing with internal strife. After Roger Toussaint’s illegal strike in 2005, Samuelsen came aboard as a reform candidate, but he is now embroiled in his own disputes. The TWU contract negotiations will come due next year, and Samuelsen will have to get his own house in order before taking on — or working with — the MTA to hammer out another deal.
Nov
03
An alternate subway but only for a mile and a half
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PATH's limited service in Manhattan doesn't make it a viable subway competitor.
Had the tunnel construction held up in the late 1870s, today’s PATH system would be the region’s oldest subway. But a series of construction mishaps, including a few fatal tunnel blowouts in 1880, shelved the plans for a New Jersey/New York underground train until work resumed in 1902. By 1911, the system as we know it today was in place, and for all intents and purposes, the New York City end of the PATH system has remained unchanged for 99 years.
Today, PATH is a small but vital part of the region’s transportation network. Its popularity seemingly peaked in the years before the Holland Tunnel opened as a transportation competitor, but the little railroad still carries over 250,000 passengers a day, most of whom are bound for the World Trade Center stop or one of the stations underneath 6th Ave.
The stations themselves resemble an alternative subway in New York City, and the vast majority of the city’s straphangers rarely have the need or opportunity to ride PATH. The routing in Manhattan after all covers just 1.4 miles and already runs where the subways go. (As a historical side note, the PATH tracks along 6th Ave. are in between the IND local tracks and above the express tracks. New York City had to build the independent 6th Ave. line around the preexisting PATH infrastructure.)
Yet, in today’s Times, Michael Grynbaum wonders if more commuters would be willing to turn to the PATH system come 2011. Why? Because of the fares. As Grynbaum relates, one trip on the PATH train costs just $1.75 while a pay-per-ride swipe of the MetroCard will cost over $2 even with the bulk discount next year. Those few folks riding from the village to Chelsea should imply take the PATH, he writes.
To the uninitiated, a ride on the PATH train might seem like stumbling into a Bizarro World subway. The familiar wooden benches of the subway station are replaced by curvy seats made from silver plastic. The ubiquitous security warning — “If You See Something, Say Something” — is rendered in PATHese: “You Call It In, We Check It Out.” The signage has a less graceful version of the subway’s Helvetica, and the Corinthian columns are painted an oddly vivid blue.
But regular riders say that PATH trains are more frequent, cleaner and quieter than subway trains. “Significantly less screeching,” said [Greenwich Village resident Casey] Smith, who, like many converts to PATH, stumbled upon the railroad months after moving into his neighborhood. In two years of daily rides on PATH, he said he had never waited longer than five minutes for a train.
It is difficult to measure how many PATH passengers ride the train solely within Manhattan, and officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the railroad, say that those customers have traditionally made up a small percentage of the railroad’s New Jersey-centric ridership. Dozens of riders can be spotted boarding Midtown-bound trains on weekday mornings at the PATH stations in Manhattan. With the price of a monthly MetroCard going up to $104 next year, longtime PATH riders say they expect to see more riders coming through the turnstiles of that railroad, where a 30-day pass costs $54.
New York City Transit officials were rightly dismissive of PATH’s potential competitiveness. “I don’t believe it’s ever been a concern,” MTA spokesperson Charles Seaton said to The Times.
It is romantic to think of a better-funded and somewhat more monder competitor to the MTA’s subway service, but the real problem is that the trains simply don’t go anywhere. “Dozens of riders” at one station represent just a fraction of the people who rely on the more extensive subway system, and by and large, people commuting from the village to West 33rd St. simply walk anyway. This isn’t a high-demand route. Now, if we want to talk about better integration between PATH and NYC Transit, that’s a different story altogether.
Nov
03
TAB ‘volunteers’ to offer translator services
Posted by: | CommentsAfter coming under fire from civil rights groups, New York City Transit has voluntarily agreed to provide translation services for those facing Transit Adjudication Bureau hearings. According to a letter from New York City Transit lawyer Michael Schnabel and obtained by The Times, those defending themselves from charges of fare-beating, littering or quality-of-life offenses will soon be able to receive the assistance of translators via a phone service. “We do support the view that those individuals who appear for hearings should be afforded every reasonable opportunity to effectively present their defenses,” Schnabel wrote.
In late September, the NYCLU had challenged the MTA’s lack of translators, and one reporter sent to a TAB hearing watched as a defendant struggled to find someone who could provide an accounting of the proceedings. Transit has maintained though that is not “legally obligated” to provide these but rather is doing so ensure that the accused are able “to fully participate in the process to the greatest extent reasonably possible.” Still, the NYCLU called this a clear victory. “They recognize it’s an indefensible situation, even if they don’t agree it’s an illegal situation,” lawyer Christopher Dunn said. “I don’t have any doubt they are going to implement this.” The MTA says the translation services will be in place by the end of the year.
Nov
03
Who’s to blame for subway rats?
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Do rats thrive because the MTA doesn't know how to kill them or because straphangers are sloppy with their food? (Photo by flickr user Ludovic Burtron)
Anyone who uses the subway in New York City has his or her own horror stories involving rats. For me, two stick out in my mind. Once, while waiting for the Brooklyn-bound F on the 14th St. platform with my family, a rat darted over our shoe tops and scurried into a supply closet. Never again have I stood by that closet. The other involves a post-Yankee game rat sighting on the 2 platform at 149th St./Grand Concourse, and as my sister will attest, the rats were the size of squirrels. I cringe just thinking about those creatures scurrying about the platform in search of food.
For straphangers, rats are just a fact of life underground. Usually, we treat these rodents with a mix of contempt, disgust and curiosity. We’re happy to watch them scurry about on the tracks, a good six feet below our feet, but when they make their ways onto the platforms, we are less accepting of our fellow furried travelers. We don’t know how many rats live in New York City, but estimates range from 250,000 to 100 million. Controlling the population is nearly impossible.
In mid-2010, amidst the uproar over bed bug infestations, the Department of Health highlighted the rat problem. The DOH inspected 18 subway stations in Lower Manhattan and found signs of mild-to-serious infestation problems in half of those stops. Rats lived in the tunnels and the walls. They thrived near garbage and would eat anything. They just are.
Earlier this week, State Senator Bill Perkins issued a follow-up of sorts. In late July, he announced a survey entitled Have You Seen a Rat Today?, and this week, the results are out. Not surprisingly, New Yorkers think the city and its subways has a “severe” rat problem. Over 57 percent of respondents claim to see rats on a daily basis while another 29 report weekly sightings. Just 1 percent of those who answered say they never see rats, a number deflated by the very nature of the survey but not far from the truth.
The result get even more, um, appetizing. Three percent of the 5000 who responded said they saw rats inside of their subway cars while 51 say the rats are confined to the train tracks. The station within Perkins’ 30th District with the highest incidence of rats was the 125th St. stop on the Lexington Ave. line (4/5/6) with 1320 sightings. My parents’ 96th St. stop on the West Side IRT (1/2/3) had 1158 reports of rodents, and while 80 percent of respondents say the rat problem is either “severe” or in a “state of emergency,” 60 percent say the subways can be rat-free.
But the interesting part of this survey comes in the sections leveling blame. Respondents believed the MTA did not do enough to combat the rat infestations with station cleanliness coming under fire. Many said that the MTA needs more garbage cans, a defect I’ve highlighted in the past, and some called the MTA’s pest-control efforts “inept.” One person even suggested the MTA “shut the trains down for two days and do a major extermination job” to fight the rodents.
At the same time, though, many fingered those who eat and litter as the culprits. Those who eat underground and are “carelessly discarding refuse on the tracks or platforms play an important role in compounding the problem,” the report says.
The comments offered at the end of the report show how New Yorkers may be willing to suffer through a ban on eating on subways. “Food and beverages should not be consumed in subways – with the exception of young children,” one respondent said. “Discarded food & drink containers invite rodents. A strong campaign against eating and drinking in subways needs to be conducted. First we need to enforce regulations around littering. The behavior of our citizens is contributing to the problem.”
“What we know for sure is the rats are not growing the food they are eating, nor are they shopping at Whole Foods or McDonald’s,” Senator Perksin said to The Times. “If you feed ’em, you breed ’em.”
So perhaps we should stop feeding them. Now there’s a thought.
After the jump, find an embedded copy of Senator Bill Perkins’ report on rodents. Read More→
Nov
02
MTA vows to secure abandoned stations after Underbelly
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The Shadow Machine from Jason Eppink on Vimeo.
When news leaked of the Underbelly Project gallery at an abandoned subway station somewhere in New York, I assumed that the MTA would quickly identify the site and shut down porous access. It took of us intrigued by and obsessed with abandoned stations just a quick glance to identify the gallery site as the South 4th Street station, and today, I was able to confirm that the art is indeed in this IND Second System shell station. The MTA figured it out too and pledged better security.
I asked the authority about their official response to the so-called exhibition, and it was as you might expect. “NYC Transit is working with the NYPD in the investigation and follow-up on this matter,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said. “Further inspections will be made to this and other similar locations throughout the system to better secure these areas. We remind the public that any such incursions into unauthorized areas of the transit system is considered trespassing and is punishable by law not to mention, dark and dangerous.”
Meanwhile, I learned this morning as well that an MTA work crew went into the old South 4th Street station to explore the site. They were spotted entering the shell at the northbound end of the Broadway stop on the G train, and Donovan told me that the authority’s crews are working to identify potential access points and to seal up these abandoned areas. “New York City Transit staff were on site today to assess the station’s security and make some adjustments to make it more secure,” Donovan said.
As the video above from Jason Eppink — the artist behind this summer’s Spoiler Alert signs and a 2008 subway chair installation — shows, it is indeed dark and dangerous, and it appears as though at least one site access point requires walking along or through subway tracks. More scenes from the makeshift gallery have reached the Internet as well. Wall Kandy offers up a blog post and a flickr photo gallery. These photos are from July 30-August 1, and I have to wonder what time and other graffiti artists have done to the project in the intervening three months.
We won’t, it seems, learn that answer from the MTA. Although an MTA crew got to explore a long lost part of a planned subway expansion, I doubt they took pictures. Still, eve as the MTA works to secure the site and prevent unwanted access to dangerous areas and dark corners, the authority is tantalizingly leaving the art in place. “We have,” Donovan told me, “no intention of painting over or removing the artwork.”
After a jump, one of my favorite pieces of the street art from the Underbelly Project. Read More→
Nov
02
Highlighting a MetroCard swiping scam
Posted by: | CommentsFor the past few months, the Daily News has continually beaten the drum of fare capture. The paper has focused on turnstile-jumpers and Select Bus Service violators, and while the pure numbers seem high, the MTA’s bleed rate doesn’t appear to be out of line with that suffered by most transit agencies. Last week, though, the News highlighted a problem that doesn’t get too much attention: MetroCard swiping scams.
The story is simple: Con men looking for a few quick bucks buy used, but not empty, MetroCards from tourists or unlimited ride cards, jam MetroCard Vending Machines and charge straphangers $2 per swipe. The fare is lower for those paying, and the folks selling the swipes pocket a few bucks — sometimes as much as $200 at a time. According to the Daily News article, riders at Sutphin Boulevard, a “hot spot” for vandalism and swipe scams, are fed up, but the cops do nothing about the scammers.”They break the [MetroCard] machines on purpose so that when you go in in the morning, only one machine works, and they’re ready for you to use one of their MetroCards,” a woman identified only as Erica said. “Nobody cares about it at al,..they always come back. They’re like roaches.”
The MTA says that Sutphin Boulevard is on their internal list of potential problem stations, and other tourist-heavy stations with or without agents have suffered as well. It is unclear how the authority plans to tackle the problem. “Our station agents would report any incidents of illegal swipe activity and they have done that in the past at that station, and we’ve also had some vandalism at that station,” an agency spokesperson said of Sutphin. “The vandalism can be an indicator, but not always, of swipe-selling.”
Nov
02
Election Day issue watch: MTA payroll tax
Posted by: | CommentsAs Election Day is finally, mercifully upon us and New Yorkers head to the polls to elect a whole bunch of newly ineffective state representatives, one issue near and dear to our transit-loving hearts could be in play. If the right people win election, the MTA’s payroll tax could be in jeopardy. This tax, passed as part of the 2009 funding plan, isn’t popular, and even Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Cuomo says he will reassess the tax if elected. GOP comptroller nominee Harry Wilson called it a “job-killing” tax, and Republicans running for state office may try to overturn it on the first day of the next legislative session in Albany.
Yet, as Judy Rife of the Times Herald-Record explored yesterday, the payroll tax is seemingly a necessary evil. Without it, the MTA would be facing a truly disastrous economic crisis as the authority’s budget would be another $1.3-$1.5 billion hole. “The payroll tax has proven to be crucially important to the MTA,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said to Rife. “Its existence prevented service cuts and fare (and toll) increases from being even worse, and it is reducing the funding gap in our five-year capital plan.”
Streetsblog’s Noah Kazis offered a race-by-race analysis of the payroll tax, and it’s clear that, while their constituents pay just 25 percent of the total tax revenue collected, suburban representatives are up in arms over the tax. Yet, no one has proposed an adequate way to fund transit. Be it congestion pricing, East River Bridge tolls or another yet-to-be determined source of income, the state simply cannot do away with the payroll tax without replacing it and the billions it generates for the MTA.
Nov
02
The history of a subway shell at South 4th Street
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A six-track ghost station sits above the G train stop at Broadway in South Williamsburg. (Photo via Subway & Rail)
When news of the Underbelly Project’s subway station art show hit the Internet this weekend, subway lovers scrambled to adduce the site and quickly settled upon the South 4th Street subway shell. This is a six-track, IND station in South Williamsburg hidden from the public but identical to the station seen in the photos presented to the public by the Underbelly Project. To the uninitiated, this stop may sound like a phantom subway station. Isn’t the only 4th Street station at West 4th in Manhattan? What is this South 4th Street station? Where is it? And where do the trains that once serviced it go?
The answers — especially to the last question — are tricky. The South 4th Street subway station isn’t anything quite like the city’s other abandoned stations. It’s never seen revenue service before, and in fact, it doesn’t even have a rail track running through it. It exists in fragments — poured concrete, unfinished stairwells, no lightening, no through tunnels — and is a remnant of an era of larger plans. In a sense, it’s not an abandoned station because no trains ever served it nor could they. Rather, it is an abandoned dream.
The South 4th Street was to be a major transfer and connection point for the IND Second System. The shell was built into the ceiling of the Broadway stop on the IND Crosstown — a so-called provision statement — before the city even knew if funding for the remainder of the line would ever materialize. When World War II and the subsequent advent of the automobile age put a grinding halt to subway expansion, the South 4th Street shell remained just that. It is a testament to another era, behind false walls and closed-off staircases, and today, it apparently housings one of the largest street art exhibitions in New York City.
Today, a six-track station seems unimaginably wasteful. The MTA is building the Second Ave. Subway with only two tracks due to budgetary constraints, and the only other stations and tunnels with six tracks — Hoyt-Schermerhorn comes to mind — never make use of the full array of options. The two outer tracks at Hoyt-Schermerhorn lead into the Court St. stop which we know today as the Transit Museum. It too was part of the grandeur of the Second System and a planned Brooklyn extension for the 1930s edition of the Second Ave. Subway.
But back in 1929 and again in 1939 when the city was trying to build up its subway system, South 4th Street in South Williamsburg was to be a major intersection. The plans are aggressive: Both the Sixth Ave. and Eighth Ave. lines would have passed through this station, bound for multiple points east, south and north. The Second System, which I explored in depth in 2008, which have reimagined New York City, and the Second System’s Big Apple would be a more accessible one than ours is today.
The 1929 expansion plans included three spurs from the six-track South 4th Street station. Click here for a full view.
According to proposals from the era, the city considered a variety of routes into Brooklyn and Queens, but the Manhattan connections were the same. The Sixth Ave. local would have run the route we know today, but from Second Ave., the trains would have continued east. In fact, the stub tunnels on the two middle tracks that extend eastward past the Second Ave. stop are a provision for the route that would have led through South 6th St. The other part would have swung the Eighth Ave. local up Worth St., past the current Essex St. East Broadway stop, across the East River and to South 4th Street.
Eastward out of South 4th Street, the possibilities were twofold. In the 1929 plan, one set of tracks would have led down Stuyvesant Ave., crossing the IND Fulton St. Line at Utica Ave. — where another shell station and some unused mezzanines live — and continuing down Utica Ave. and to Marine Park. The other spur would have led up Myrtle Ave. where the line would split again. This time, one route would have allowed the Queens Boulevard line to connect to the Rockaways via Fresh Pond Road, 65th Place and 78th St. while the other branch would head out to the Rockaways, a branch eventually realized by a more modest extension of the Fulton St. Line. We used to dream big.
The subway expansion plans from 1939 show where the shell station at South 4th Street crosses over the G line. Click here for a full view.
When the Great Depression hit, the city had to shelve the 1929 expansion plan, and ten years later with a six-track shell provision built along South 4th St., the latest iteration of the Second System was far more modest. The Manhattan plans remained the same, but the line east from South 4th Street would continue on only to Marine Park via Utica Ave. Even before revenue service — or full tunnels were dug — the six-track station was a relic of another era. (Plans for a Utica Ave. subway in 1969 involved extending the IRT instead of the IND.)
Today, we think small and build small. Once upon a time, New York left stations unbuilt as shells for future expansion. It was cheaper and easier to build a shell at the South 4th Street transfer point than it was to build around a preexisting subway station. Now, we build just a two-track extension along Second Ave. and scoff at the notion of a Second System-like expansion in the 2010s. Imagine this part of Williamsburg as a major transfer point from the G to Manhattan, from Queens and Brooklyn into Manhattan. It’s what could have been and never was, and all that’s left is an abandoned shell of a subway station and some crazy photos of the remnants of an era when we tried to plan ahead.
Nov
01
Commemorating the Malbone St. Wreck
Posted by: | CommentsThe vast majority of New Yorkers do not realize that November 1 is the anniversary of the deadliest subway crash in New York City history. On this day in 1918, a BRT train running along the Brighton Line took a steep curve at over 30 miles per hour and slammed into the walls. At least 93 people died in that accident, and the reverberations were immediate. While the BRT changed its operating practices, the city renamed Malbone St. to Empire Boulevard since so many families in Brooklyn felt the impact of the collision. What follows is the post I ran on Nov. 1, 2008, the 90th anniversary of the accident.
“Scores Killed or Maimed in Brighton Tunnel Wreck,” screamed the Page One story in The Times on Saturday, November 2, 1918. The night before, a speeding train crashed coming around a sharp curve in the Malbone St. tunnel on the Brighton Line. Over 90 people died, and the accident remains the single deadliest crash in New York City transit history.
For weeks and months afterwards, the Malbone St. crash dominated the news, and the details are rather gruesome:
A Brighton Beach Train of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, made up of five wooden cars of the oldest type in use, which was speeding with a rush hour crowd to make up lost time on its way from Park Row to Coney Island, jumped the track shortly before 7 o’clock last evening on a sharp curve approaching the tunnel at Malbone Street, in Brooklyn, and plunged into a concrete partition between the north and south bound tracks…
The first car left the rails a few feet in front of the opening of the tunnel and rammed one end of a concrete partition separating the northbound from the southbound tracks. It was thrown at right angles across the roadbed in front of the entrance to the tunnel. The other cars cut right through it, the second car smashing it to bits and the whole train passing over the wreckage and coming to a stop 200 feet down the tracks inside the tunnel.
Packed together as in a box without structural strength to give them any protection, the passengers in the first car were crushed and cut to pieces. Not one is believed to have escaped. After breaking through the first car, the rest of the train dashed it against the partition wall and strewed wreckage and passengers along the tracks ahead, where the wheels of the cars following passed over them. Only splintered fragments of wood and broken and twisted bits of iron and steel remained of the first car.
The second and third cars, leaving the rails after their impact with the first, ran sidewise into a series of iron pillars supporting the roof of the tunnel at intervals beside the partition. The pillars cut great gashes in the sides of the cars, which were still traveling at high speed, and mowed down the passengers who were standing striking the heads of some from their bodies.
The left sides of the second and third cars were stripped away. Scores of men, women, and children were flung by the impact out of these cars against pillars and the concrete wall, where they were killed instantly or ground under the wheels after falling back upon the tracks. Some who were not flung from the car were killed inside when they fell upon the broken iron of seats, splintered timbers and iron beams which projected through the shattered bottoms of the car. Passengers on the platforms were nearly all killed instantly. One dead man was found impaled on a broken bar of iron, which had run underneath the car, but which broke and shot up into the air like a javelin in the crash.
Furthermore, the impact on the B.R.T. company and the concurrent motorman strike was immediate. Police arrested B.R.T. officials, and the motorman strike ended a few hours later. Over the next few months, Brooklyn grappled with this horrendous accident. At one point, nearly everyone in Brooklyn knew someone impacted by the crash, and in the aftermath, the city changed the name of Malbone St. to Empire Boulevard. The connection between the crash and the name of the street would forever scar the victims’ friends, neighbors and family.
Today, what is rather remarkable about the famed Malbone St. crash is how it has largely been lost to time. The BMT Brighton Line now runs a slightly different route, and the extremely sharp curve is now a part of the Franklin Ave. Shuttle tracks. The tunnel and tracks themselves are rarely used, and the accident is rarely mentioned in the history of the city.
Over the weekend, Flatbush Gardener memorialized the accident by remembering every single victim. It is a fitting tribute to one the city’s most tragic events.
For the full text of The Times article, click here.
