By GARY FONVILLE
Forgotten NY correspondent
I had great pleasure in doing two entries concerning trolley tracks that were breaking through many levels of asphalt that made them seemingly disappear from NYC’s streets. You can find them by looking for TROLLEY TRACES and MORE TROLLEY TRACKS. I was sitting in my car recently on the north side of Fulton Street, between Vanderbilt Avenue and Clinton Avenue in Clinton Hill when I happened to see a trolley rail trying to free itself from its asphalt tomb.
These tracks have been buried since August, 1941, when trolleys (streetcars) were substituted by bus service. That’s a different story for a different time. Currently this stretch of Fulton Street is serviced by the B25 bus, which runs from Broadway Junction in East New York, Brooklyn, all the way to Fulton Ferry, near the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
4/28/16
3 comments
When the City took over the bankrupt IRT and BMT lines and tore down the old Fulton Street EL all the way to Broadway Junction, they decided to also put buses on to replace the trolleys. My Father told me years ago, there was too much traffic downtown as the reason given for the early replacement….
Its more likely that Mayor LaGuardia caved in to Robert Moses and the oil and rubber interests of the day….
No. It was called “progress” which was once considered a good thing.