BusTalk

[N4 Jamaica]

Allow me a few comments about the list of proposed route eliminations in The Bronx, as reported in the NY Daily News of 12.11.2009. Four routes are listed for elimination:
Bx4 -- Operates on Westchester Avenue between The Hub and Westchester Square. As a TARS streetcar route, it carried the letter A in the 1930's and 1940's. The excuse that this route is duplicated by the IRT elevated subway above it is baseless because the two subway lines (2 and 6) do not create a through route on Westchester Avenue.
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Bx 14 -- Operates from the Country Club neighborhood of Pelham Bay via a circuitous route to Hugh Grant Circle. It is one of those Bronx routes that Surface Transportation Corp. established as feeders to a subway. I think the route was much shorter, and only in recent years was it lengthened from Westchester Square to Hugh Grant Circle with a tour of Parkchester.
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Bx20 -- Operates from Riverdale to Inwood via Spuyten Duyvil. In my youth, connecting with the Independent was classier than a connection with the Interborough. I think Surface Transportation called its principal Riverdale route Bx10 (up Riverdale Avenue to the City Line) and the Spuyten Duyvil routing Bx10A.
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Bx34 -- This also was originally a feeder route to the subway, bringing the residents of Woodlawn Heights to the Interborough at Woodlawn, the Concourse subway at East 205th St., and the bustling shopping and entertainment district of Fordham Road. As a subway feeder, it lost traffic to express buses of Liberty Lines, but it is still important to have a bus route atop Woodlawn Heights. If memory serves me correctly, Surface Transportation's Routes Bx1 and Bx2 served Grand Concourse (as now), Bx3 was Prospect Avenue, and Bx4 was the current Bx34 from Woodlawn to Fordham Road. I think that Surface routes 1 to 18 were numbered chronologically as they were established. When the 207th Street crosstown was motorized, it became Bx19, and my C car ("Bronx and Van") became Bx20.
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When these proposed eliminations were announced earlier this year, I wondered whether the intent was political: to raise a scream from politicians from neighborhoods where the proportion of voters is higher. Note that three of the routes served a population that had to pay double fare to reach downtown before the advent of Metrocard transfers.
Joe McMahon