B43 (New York City bus)

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b43
Graham Avenue Line and Tompkins Avenue Line
Prospect Park ​​
Length	7 miles (11 km)
Other routes	B48 Lorimer Street/Classon/Franklin Avenues
Service
Operates	All times
Annual patronage	1,720,648 (2022)[1]
Transfers	Yes
Timetable	B43
Route map ←  B42    B44 SBS  →

The Graham Avenue Line and Tompkins Avenue Line were two

The B43 begins at the Prospect Park station and runs on Ocean Avenue until it becomes Empire Boulevard, running on Empire Boulevard until Brooklyn and Kingston Avenues.It runs southbound on Brooklyn Avenue and northbound on Kingston Avenue until Fulton Street, where it switches to Tompkins and Throop Avenues, respectively. It runs on Tompkins and Throop Avenues until Flushing Avenue. It runs on Flushing Avenue until Graham Avenue, which it runs on until Engert and Driggs Avenues until Manhattan Avenue. It then runs up Manhattan Avenue until Box Street, where it terminates.

History

Trolley service

The

On April 27, 1890, Brooklyn City opened new trackage on Flushing Avenue from Graham Avenue east to Metropolitan Avenue, with the service operating on it becoming the new Flushing Avenue Line, and the old Flushing Avenue Line being renamed the Flushing and Graham Avenues Line and afterwards, the Graham Avenue Line.[6]

Bus service

Streetcars on the Tompkins Avenue Line were replaced by buses on August 24, 1947.^[7]

Buses on the Graham Avenue Line were substituted for streetcars on December 11, 1949,^[8] and the route was renumbered the B62.^[9]

The B47 trolley was replaced with electric trolley buses and ran on Kingston Avenue in both directions (it was a two-way street) to Williamsburgh Bridge Plaza via Tompkins, Division, and Lee Avenues. During the heavy snowfalls in the 1950s, the electric buses had difficulty making it up the Kingston Avenue hill, and were seen backed up on Empire Boulevard in columns.^{[citation needed]}

When the north-south avenues in Brooklyn were converted to one way in the early 1960s, the B47 went north on Kingston Avenue and south on Brooklyn Avenue until Empire Boulevard. The electric trolleybuses were replaced first with “old look” GMC buses, and later with “new-look” GMC buses.^{[citation needed]}

On September 10, 1995, the B62 was merged with the B47 to form the present-day B43 route.^[10][11] The B47 had replaced the Tompkins Avenue Line running between Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Williamsburg along Empire Boulevard, Kingston Avenue, Tompkins Avenue, and Harrison Avenue. When the routes were combined, the Harrison Avenue portion of the B47 was removed, along with the Flushing Avenue section of the B62. The B43 was moved to the Grand Avenue Depot when it opened in 2008 but was moved back to the Jackie Gleason Depot by early 2011.^[12]

On December 1, 2022, the MTA released a draft redesign of the Brooklyn bus network.^[13][14] As part of the redesign, southbound service in Bedford–Stuyvesant would be rerouted along Albany Avenue and Marcus Garvey Boulevard to serve areas without existing bus service. Closely spaced stops would also be eliminated.^[15]

See also

• Greenpoint and Williamsburgh Railroad
• Crosstown Line (Brooklyn surface)

References