A rollsign from years gone by recently on display on the B train. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
I took the picture atop this post on Dec. 8, 2009. It was shortly after 2:15 when one of the last remaining R32s to make the B run pulled into Broadway/Lafayette, and the car I boarded was just flat-out wrong. As is evident from the picture, the B, normally running down the Sixth Ave. line and then the Brighton line out to Brighton Beach, was confused. It seemed to think it was running the BMT Broadway/West End Line, and while most passengers hesitated to board the train, most seemed content to ignore this anomalous rollsign.
For the B train, errant rollsigns are not an occurrence all that rare. Due to the Manhattan Bridge construction that spanned three decades and lasted nearly twenty years, the B train has been rerouted more frequently than any train, and for significant chunks of the 1990s, two different B trains — one orange and one yellow — ran various routes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In fact, a few months before boarding the confused B, I saw another slightly less lost B train:
So why the divergent history? The tale lies in the MTA’s need to adequately serve Brooklyn and in the need to shore up support for the Manhattan Bridge. Because the subways lines are on the outside lanes of the bridge, the joints on the bridge were severely stressed for decades, and by the mid-1980s, trains could only crawl across the bridge for fear of structural damage. Facing a disaster, the city and MTA finally began work on a decades-long project to steady the bridge. It would prove quite disruptive to subway travel and did not wrap until 2004.
To accomplish its task, the MTA had to close various sides of the bridge for long stretches of time. Today, the B and D trains run along the northern tracks on the bridge to Grand St. and up the Sixth Ave. IND line. The Q and N take the southern crossing and enter Manhattan at Canal St. before heading north along the BMT Broadway line. But that is a creation of the last six years. How then did service used to look and why are these rollsigns as they are?
Well, when the northern tracks were closed, the B train ran in two segments. One trip took riders from 168th St. in Manhattan — now a C train stop — to 34th St./Herald Square along the IND routes under Central Park West and Sixth Ave. That was the orange-and-white section. The other part of the trip started at either 21st St./Queensbridge in Queens or 57th St. and Broadway in Manhattan and carried the B over the southern Manhattan Bridge tracks. The train would travel along the West End line and terminate in Coney Island as the D does today.
When the southern tracks were closed, the B would invariable run via the 6th Ave. line, across the bridge and to Coney Island. At times, the B was truncated and saved as a Brooklyn shuttle between Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. and Coney Island. Sometimes, it would run weekedays-only, and sometimes, just in Manhattan. The fact that the B has had a stable route for the last six years and counting is a modern creation.
When the Bridge reopened for good in 2004, Transit had to address changing conditions underground and changing travel patterns. In 1986, when the Bridge closed, people were generally not too keen on riding the subway, and no one wanted to go to Union Square or Times Square, major destinations of the BMT Broadway line. So when faced with the chance to run trains that could spur to either route, the MTA polled riders and found a preference for the Broadway route that hadn’t existed 18 years earlier. As The Times detailed then, the routes were adjusted and for a few weeks, confused reigned.
Today, we know the B as the Brighton Express. It’s an orange-and-white bulleted train that runs only during weekdays and not at all during the overnights. It’s a speedy ride into Manhattan, and it’s the train I take more than any other these days. Today, it’s a very stable ride, but now and then, when someone sets an improper rollsign, the B can still remind of construction from years past.
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