BusTalk

[N4 Jamaica]

Yesterday, I rode B61 from its southern starting point at 18th Street and Prospect Park West to the northern terminal at busy Smith & Livingston Streets. It uses about eighteen streets as it twists through all sort of interesting neighborhoods, Park Slope, Red Hook, and South Brooklyn. The route is almost six miles in length, about 45 minutes.
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Headway seemed to be 10 minutes at 5 p.m. The northbound load was rather light, but a crowd had filled up our leader for the southbound run from what is called Fulton Mall. All buses I saw were CNG's from Jackie Gleason. I hope to add photos and more notes to this thread.
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The biggest surprise of the trip was to encounter left-hand running at Hamilton Avenue near the tunnel ventilation tower! Yes, the bus travels north on Van Brunt Street, and swings wide to turn southeast onto Hamilton Avenue for a short block to Carroll Street. A concrete barrier keeps traffic to the left, so we and the southbound passed British-style. Is there another city street in the Big Apple with left-side driving?
Joe McMahon

[N4 Jamaica]

Continuation....
Below is a link to a northbound B61 with the roller sign reading DNTWN BKLYN / FULTON MALL on two lines. This did not scroll to another "via" screen.
http://gallery.bustalk.info/displayimage.php?pos=-19577

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The southbound display was PARK SLOPE / 20 ST and scrolled to a two-liner, the bottom line VIA IKEA TERM.
Three photos of this B61 trip are at the above link.
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In my first post I referred to the left-side driving on a short block of Hamilton Avenue. When the Crosstown streetcar came down Columbia Street, it turned northwest on Hamilton Avenue, then took a big swing south onto Richards Street. Apparently, sometime in the 1950's the transit route was dislodged by the toll plaza of the Battery Brooklyn tunnel, so that Bus 61 swings south onto Van Brunt St., a block west of the former streetcar route. However, this BrooklynPix photo (linked below) shows the kind of swerve that both streetcars and buses had to make to get across Hamilton Avenue. The street grid north of Hamilton does not match the Red Hook street grid.
http://brooklynpix.com/photoframex1.php?photo=/photo1/R/redhook32.jpg&key=REDHOOK%2032

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Another surprise of the trip was to find a Chinese live chicken mart on the east side of Columbia Street.
Joe McMahon

[HwyHaulier]

Joe -

Good to see your recollections. I never had the opportunity to see any of it, especially as a young kid could only be in so many places!

In the street view of an era streetcar. I've long been partial to the particular type shown. From the engineering and hardware of it, these
must have been "moral equivalents" of the UR&E/ BTCo "Baltimore Cars" (60xx - 61xx series) of 1930 build from Brill, and its sub, Cincinnati.
Seems to me they were in the same approximate "graduating class" as a group of Indianapolis cars, too.

Of course, this contains an implied observation: Whether the P C C thinking of ca. 1934 was, in fact, all that "cutting edge" as widely thought...

........................Vern..................

[N4 Jamaica]

Vern,
I don't know why transit turnstiles attracted me as a kid. However, before the streetcar and bus fares rose above a nickel in July of 1948, I was aware that Comprehensive buses through Central Park had turnstiles, and that the 6000's on Flatbush Avenue also did. Better were the turnstiles on the Brooklyn PCC's, where each nickel or transfer token slid down a pipe to a cup within the reach of the operator's right hand. You could sit behind the operator and hear the coins slide.
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Dad brought me on 6000's on Crosstown from downtown to Long Island City. I also rode them from downtown on the busy Flatbush Avenue route to a few blocks below the Nostrand Avenue junction, as one could hope for a view of New Haven freight electrics below on the Bay Ridge Line.
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The other day, I watched New York's dip-the-Metrocard system cause
each passenger to stop at the farebox and reclaim the card. In Jersey City, many passengers often just wear their pass on a neck lariat as they board, as it is a flash-pass system, without the need to register every card number. Although the operator of a 6000 did make change and did trade a token for a paper transfer, the boarding was swifter than most routes in the five boroughs today. Swifter boarding not only speeds passengers, but it also saves the company salary time.
Best wishes.
Joe