When
the Fifth Avenue Coach Company placed an experimental
“gasoline-electric omnibus” in passenger service in the
summer of 1905, New York City became the pioneering home
of public motor bus transit in the United States. These
and other trial runs along Fifth Avenue, between 88th
Street and Washington Square, proved so successful that
by 1907, Fifth Avenue Coach replaced its entire fleet
of horse-drawn stages with 15 motor buses. Over the next
decade the company created new cross-town and scenic
uptown lines that used open-top double-decker coaches
and charged double the standard five-cent fare for its
“first-class” service. |
Photograph
of 5th Avenue Coach taken on Riverside Drive, about 1910. |
Public
transit motor-bus service has expanded greatly in New York
City since these tentative beginnings a
century ago. Motor-bus technology and design changed enormously,
too — in response to mechanical innovation, new fuels, evolving
public taste, standards of comfort, environmental and safety
concerns, and demand for accessibility. Today, MTA New York
City Transit’s Department of Buses continues to develop and
promote improvements to its fleet, as it carries more passengers
(760 million a year) and maintains more buses (more than 4,500)
than any other system in North America.
Fifth
Avenue Coach double-decker motorbus, No.1244, circa 1930.
A
2005 photo of a Fifth Avenue Coach Company double-decker
motorbus, No. 1263, which was in operation on the streets
of New York from 1931 to1953. Motorbus No. 1263 is now
in the permanent collection of the New York Transit Museum.
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To
commemorate its heritage, MTA New York City Transit’s
Department of Buses preserves, in concert with the New
York Transit
Museum, a fleet of vintage buses. The collection is comprised
of twenty vehicles, dating from 1917 to 1981. Although
far from a comprehensive selection of the scores of motor
bus models that plied the streets of the City over the
last 100 years, the vintage fleet is nonetheless impressive.
Highlights include three Fifth Avenue Coach Company double-deckers,
from 1917, 1931, and 1938; a typical 1949 City bus, identical
to the one Jackie Gleason was photographed in as bus
driver Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners; and the first
(experimental) air-conditioned bus in the U.S., from
1956.
The
fleet is housed and maintained by the Department of Buses
in various depots throughout the City. Opportunities
to view the collection occur on a limited basis. The
Transit Museum works closely with the Department of Buses
to sponsor events, such as the Museum’s Annual Bus Festival,
to showcase the vintage buses for the public. Individual
buses are sometimes displayed at large community events,
such as “CultureFest,” “Harlem Week,” and Brooklyn’s
“Atlantic Antic.” Part of the Vintage Fleet is also featured
at the Department of Buses annual Bus Roadeo, a special
competition among New York City Transit’s own employees. |
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Learn
More about Surface Transportation in New York City:
Visit the New York Tansit Museum
At
the New
York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, visitors can enjoy
On the Streets: New York’s Trolleys and Buses, a gallery
dedicated
to surface
transportation.
The exhibit presents,
in
nine linked segments, a history of aboveground mobility
for the last 175 years - from the early 1800s through the
21st
Century.
The central element of the exhibition is a simulated
traffic intersection complete with traffic lights and coordinated
walk-don’t-walk signs, parking meters, fire hydrants, and
an array of other street “furniture.” Children of all ages
will delight in a new, wheelchair accessible, twelve-seat
bus; refurbished 1960s bus cab, and child-sized trolley.
Clearing
the Air, a highly interactive segment of On The Streets allows visitors
to learn about the evolution of fuel technologies and evaluate
their environmental impact. At a series of interactive
stops within the exhibition, visitors are encouraged to
compare old and new technologies and explore the origin
of various fuels used over time, as well as understand
steps being taken by Transit’s Department of Buses to reduce
harmful emissions.
On the Streets visitors also
enjoy the new Dr. George T.F. Rahilly Trolley and Bus
Study Center. The Center features over 50 detailed models
of
trolleys and work cars created by Dr. Rahilly, a trolley
enthusiast whose painstaking depiction of every trolley
that ever ran in Brooklyn, is a highlight of the Museum’s
collections.
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