The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system that serves four of the five boroughs of New York City in the U.S. state of New York: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Operated by the New York City Transit Authority under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York, the New York City Subway is the busiest rapid transit system in the United States and the seventh busiest in the world, with 5.225 million daily riders. The system's  stations qualifies it to have the largest number of rapid transit stations in the world.

Three rapid transit companies merged in 1940 to create the present New York City Subway system: the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT), and the Independent Subway System (IND). In the Bronx, only the IRT and IND constructed lines in the borough.

History 

On May 17, 1886, the Suburban Rapid Transit Company operated the first rapid transit operation in the Annexed District—as the Bronx was known then—via a crossing over the Harlem River between 133rd Street and 129th Street in Manhattan. The Suburban was bought by the Manhattan Railway Company in 1891, which had operated the Second Avenue and Third Avenue Lines from its 129th Street terminal. In turn, the Manhattan Railway was acquired by the IRT in 1902 through a 999-year lease. This line was then known as the IRT Third Avenue Line in both the Bronx and Manhattan. The line was incrementally built northward since its opening until 1920, when it reached its northernmost terminal at Gun Hill Road and connected with the northern portion of the IRT White Plains Road Line. On May 12, 1955, the Third Avenue Line was closed south of 149th Street in response to developers wishing to construct newer residences and commercial buildings on the East Side of Manhattan.  The remainder of the Third Avenue Line, wholly within the Bronx, was closed on April 28, 1973 and was subsequently demolished.

In the Bronx, the earliest stations and infrastructure of the New York City Subway still in existence lie in the IRT White Plains Road Line. The line, under a contract with the City of New York called Contract 1, was constructed to connect to the original IRT subway system which had operated since October 27, 1904. The section of the White Plains Road Line that opened a month later operated between 149th Street and 180th Street–Bronx Park (a spur line station closed in 1952, now demolished) and ran through the IRT Third Avenue Line. The underground subway from Manhattan (via the IRT Lenox Avenue Line) reached the Bronx by July 10, 1905 and White Plains Road Line trains operated through the subway. In 1908, as an extension of Contract 1, the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, would reach the western Bronx from 225th Street to its present terminal at Van Cortlandt Park–242nd Street, signifying the completion of the first subway. The IRT's next contract, Contract 3, would be granted alongside the BMT's, Contract 4, in what is called the Dual Contracts. Under the Dual Contracts, from 1917 to 1920, the White Plains Road Line was extended from what is now West Farms Square–East Tremont Avenue to 219th Street, 238th Street, and Wakefield–241st Street, its northernmost terminal. Also under the contract, the IRT Jerome Avenue Line was opened in 1917 between 149th Street–Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road before its extension northward to Woodlawn and the completion of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line a year later. The IRT Ninth Avenue Line's 155th Street station also connected to the Jerome Avenue Line at 167th Street in 1918. (This section was closed in 1958 and later demolished.) Between 1918 and 1920, the IRT Pelham Line was the last Contract 3 line to be built, from its original section between 125th Street (in Manhattan) and Third Avenue–138th Street, to extensions to Hunts Point Avenue, East 177th Street, Westchester Square, and its northeastern terminus at Pelham Bay Park.

The IND's first and only line in the Bronx, the IND Concourse Line, opened in 1933 from 145th Street in Manhattan to Norwood–205th Street, its northernmost terminal. The most recent expansion of Bronx service happened shortly after the unification of the three New York City subway systems: in 1941, the former tracks of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway between East 180th Street and Dyre Avenue were acquired by the Board of Transportation to be part of the IRT Division as the IRT Dyre Avenue Line. Through service to Manhattan via the White Plains Road Line at East 180th Street began in 1957.

Directional prefixes 
Although many east–west streets in the Bronx are prefixed with either "East" or "West", most subway stations are named without the prefix, e.g. 231st Street instead of West 231st Street. Some stations, such as East 143rd Street and East 149th Street on the Pelham Line and East 180th Street on the White Plains Road Line, have directional prefixes to differentiate from other stations in the same borough: namely the 143rd Street station of the Third Avenue Line; the 149th Street–Grand Concourse and Third Avenue–149th Street stations; and the 180th Street/Third Avenue and 180th Street–Bronx Park stations. The "East" prefix is retained for Tremont Avenue in the West Farms Square–East Tremont Avenue and Westchester Square–East Tremont Avenue stations, while the Concourse Line Tremont Avenue station omits the prefix. In addition, while the Parkchester–East 177th Street station on the Pelham Line used a directional prefix for 177th Street, the now-demolished Tremont Avenue–177th Street station on the Third Avenue Line and the now-renamed 177th Street station on the White Plains Road Line did not use the prefix.

Lines and services 

There are 70 New York City Subway stations in the Bronx, per the official count of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; of these, 9 are express-local stations. If the 2 station complexes are counted as one station each, the number of stations is 68. In the table below, lines with colors next to them indicate trunk lines, which determine the colors that are used for services' route bullets and diamonds. The opening date refers to the opening of the first section of track for the line. In the "division" column, the current division is followed by the original division in parentheses.

Stations 

Permanently closed subway stations, including those that have been demolished, are not included in the list below. Numerically named stations that are attached with a geographic location before them (Norwood–205th Street,  Wakefield–241st Street, and Van Cortlandt Park–242nd Street) are listed under the geographic location name.

See also

Notes

References

Further reading 

 
New York City Bronx
Subway
Subway stations
Stations