History of the BRT and BMT

Starting in 1899, the

Until 1907, these lines were leased to the

In 1923, as part of the reorganization of the BRT into the BMT, the two companies were merged to form the New York Rapid Transit Corporation; the Brooklyn and Queens Transit Corporation was similarly formed in 1929 as the surface transit subsidiary. When the New York City Board of Transportation took over the BMT in 1940, the company ceased to operate.

The Brooklyn Union Elevated Railroad was incorporated on January 30, 1899, and acquired the property of the

• Coney Island
  • via
    Manhattan Beach Division to Manhattan Beach
• Cypress Hills
  • via incline and
    Rockaway Park, Queens
• Canarsie Landing
• Fifth Avenue Line, Park Row, Lower Manhattan to Bay Ridge
• City Line
• Lexington Avenue Line
  , Park Row, Lower Manhattan to Cypress Hills
• Myrtle Avenue Line, Park Row, Lower Manhattan to Ridgewood, Queens

Nassau Electric Railroad

• 36th Street); the Nassau Electric also operated 86th Street Line trolleys on the West End Line south of Bath Beach^{[citation needed}
  ]

• Bath Junction); the Sea Beach also operated trolleys west of Bath Junction^{[citation needed}
  ]

South Brooklyn Railway

• Culver Line, Park Row, Lower Manhattan to Coney Island (operated by the Brooklyn Union Elevated north of 36th Street); many trolleys were also operated over the line^{[citation needed]}

The Sea Beach Railway was soon leased by the Brooklyn Union Elevated, but the other two lines — the Culver and the West End — continued to be operated separately.^{[citation needed]} On November 30, 1912, the Brooklyn Union Elevated Railroad, Canarsie Railroad, and Sea Beach Railway merged to form the New York Consolidated Railroad.

The New York Municipal Railway was incorporated on September 27, 1912,^[4] in order to lease the BRT lines built by the city under Contract 4 of the Dual Contracts. This lease was made for 49 years from January 1, 1917. Under the terms of the contract, the two systems were to be operated as one, and the city had the right of recapture, under which it could take back the lines it owned for city operation after ten years.^[5] Contract 4 elevated lines were completed above the West End tracks in 1917 and the Culver tracks in 1920, ending elevated operations on the surface.^{[citation needed]} Despite being leased to the New York Municipal Railway, all the new lines were operated by the elevated company - the New York Consolidated Railroad.^[6]

The following construction was done under Contract 4:^[7][8]

• Long Island City, Queens
• Canal Street Subway, Lower Manhattan
• Centre Street Loop Subway, Lower Manhattan
• Coney Island, Brooklyn to Sunset Park, Brooklyn
• East New York, Brooklyn
• Fourth Avenue Subway, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to Downtown Brooklyn
• New Utrecht Avenue Elevated, Coney Island, Brooklyn to Sunset Park, Brooklyn
• Corona Elevated in Queens, leased to the Interborough Rapid Transit Company

The following construction was done at the New York Municipal Railway's own expense:[7]

• Brighton Beach Elevated reconstruction, Coney Island
• Prospect Park, Brooklyn
  to Downtown Brooklyn
• Cypress Hills, Brooklyn to Jamaica, Queens
• Ozone Park, Queens
• Lutheran Cemetery Elevated, Ridgewood, Queens to Middle Village, Queens
• Sea Beach Line reconstruction (depressed), Coney Island to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
• Stillwell Avenue Terminal
  at Coney Island
• Express (third) track on the Broadway Elevated, Fulton Street Elevated, and Myrtle Avenue Elevated

The New York Consolidated Railroad and New York Municipal Railway were merged in June 1923, the same month that the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company was reorganized as the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, to form the New York Rapid Transit Corporation.The remaining Contract 4 lines were soon completed. On June 1, 1940, the New York City Board of Transportation took over operations.^[9]

BMT services were assigned numbers in 1924, which appeared only on the fronts of trains and in schedules. In 1960, the New York City Transit Authority brought the BMT into the IND letter system, and most services were reassigned as letters. Since then, many changes have been made; see the individual articles about the letters for more detail, and New York City Subway nomenclature for more general information.^[9]

Terminals shown in the table below are pre-letters. This chart shows the letter code assigned to each BMT service in 1960; important changes happened on a few lines between then and when the letters were first publicly used. While the BMT number code was officially retired in the 1960s, two of these markers would continue to appear on equipment until as late as the early 1980s. For instance the BMT 7 marker appeared on Franklin Avenue Shuttle trains as late as 1982.^[10][11]

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The BMT's predecessor BRT organized the rapid transit lines into two divisions, the Eastern Division and the Southern Division. When BMT service began on the Corona and Astoria Lines in 1923, a Queens Division was added. When the dual-operated Queens lines were divided between the BMT and IRT in 1949, the Queens Division was dissolved.

All the lines running to southern Brooklyn, including the

The distinction between Eastern and Southern BMT Divisions continues to date, partly for operational and maintenance reasons, and partly because the Eastern Division is limited to the shorter 60-foot cars. When the Chrystie Street Connection joined the IND and BMT operationally in 1967, it did not change the Division boundaries, but it did break the strict assignment of types of car to one division or another.

Prior to Chrystie Street, operation of a service on both divisions was exceedingly rare, until the

Current BMT lines in Manhattan are exclusively subway. Its Brooklyn lines include one long subway line, the

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