Previous Page First Page Next Page

Page 8

A connection to the BMT Subway System was mapped in the Dual Contracts, under which most of today's New York City subway routes were built, but the route was neither formally adopted or funded. Note that trains to the North Shore (at top left) would bypassed St. George.

     Upon acquisition, the City forbade the B&O from using the Whitehall Street Terminal. An echo of the SIRT ownership of the ferries survived until the end of private ownership, as SIRT commuters could still purchase monthly tickets on the railroad that included passage on the Staten Island Ferry without paying the nickel fare.

Hope Grows for a
Brooklyn Connection

By 1911, Staten Islanders who looked across The Narrows might have noticed the growing prominence of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company.

The BRT was an amalgam of rapid transit and trolley railways of which some were owned and others were leased. The BRT was locked in a battle with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) for the rights to operate new subway and elevated lines planned or being constructed by the City of New York for leasing to private operators.
     Attempting to trump the IRT’s plans to monopolize new rapid transit building in New York City, the BRT came up with a plan for a complete transit system, including a proposal for a tunnel under The Narrows from the Fourth Avenue (Brooklyn) subway tunnel to the vicinity of St. George.

It was the first time such a proposal had been made part of a serious transit plan.
     The BRT did capture all but one of the tunnels it sought, as well as having nearly all of its other transit proposals underwritten in the Dual Contracts of 1913, under which most of the current IRT and BMT Division lines were built or rebuilt.
     Though the idea of a connection between the BRT and the SIRT was studied and mapped as part of the Dual Contracts, it was specifically disavowed as being a funded part of the Contracts. Still this seemed to be but a bump on the road to direct rapid transit access to Staten Island from the rest of the City.

Next Page

Updated Sunday, December 23, 2001

©1965 Silver Leaf Rapid Transit. ©2001 Paul Matus. ©2001 The Composing Stack Inc.