Independent Subway System

The Independent Subway System was a rapid transit rail system in New York City that is now part of the New York City Subway. It was first constructed as the Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan in 1932. It was originally also known as the Independent City-Owned Subway System or the Independent City-Owned Rapid Transit Railroad.
One of three subway networks that became part of the modern New York City Subway, the IND was intended to be fully owned and operated by the municipal government, in contrast to the privately operated or jointly funded Interborough Rapid Transit Company and Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation companies. It was merged with these two networks when the subway system was unified in 1940.
The original IND services are the modern subway's A, C, E, F, and G services, as well as the portions of the B and D services that are not in Brooklyn. In addition, the BMT's M and R use trackage that was originally built for the IND, while the Q uses the IND Second Avenue Line, which was built after the unification of the three systems. The Rockaway Park Shuttle supplements the A service. For operational purposes, the IND and BMT lines and services are referred to jointly as the B Division.

Nomenclature

Until 1940, it was known as the Independent City-Owned Subway System, Independent Subway System, or Independent City-Owned Rapid Transit Railroad. It became known as the IND after unification of the subway lines in 1940; the name IND was assigned to match the three-letter initialisms that the IRT and BMT used.
The first IND line was the Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan, opened on September 10, 1932; for a while the whole system was colloquially known as the Eighth Avenue Subway. The original IND system was entirely underground in the four boroughs that it served, with the exception of a short section of the IND Culver Line containing two stations spanning the Gowanus Canal in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.

History

In the early 1920s, Mayor John Hylan proposed a complex series of city-owned and operated rapid transit lines to compete with the BMT and IRT, especially their elevated lines. The New York City Transit Commission was formed in 1921 to develop a plan to reduce overcrowding on the subways. The original plans included:

Two major trunk lines in midtown Manhattan, with one running under Eighth Avenue and one under Sixth Avenue, which already had an elevated line
A crosstown subway under 53rd Street running under the East River to Queens Plaza, meeting with a Brooklyn–Queens crosstown line, and continuing under Queens Boulevard and Hillside Avenue to 179th Street, where bus service would converge
A subway under the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, diverging from the Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan at 145th Street and Saint Nicholas Avenue

These lines were completely built as planned. All but a short portion of the Culver Line are underground.
On March 14, 1925, the groundbreaking of the Eighth Avenue subway took place at 123rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.
On July 8, 1931, the first train of R1s left Coney Island at 11:35am and ran via the BMT Sea Beach Line to Times Square. The trip took 42 minutes.

Opening and progress through 1933

First Manhattan trunk line, 1932

On September 10, 1932, the Eighth Avenue Line opened from 207th Street to Chambers Street, inaugurating the IND. In February 1933 the Cranberry Street Tunnel opened, along with the Eighth Avenue Line from Chambers Street to Jay Street–Borough Hall. On the northern end of the construction, in the Bronx, the connecting Concourse Line opened on July 1, 1933 from 205th Street to 145th Street. On the IND's opening day, it had a relatively small subway car fleet of 300 cars, while the IRT had 2,281 subway and 1,694 elevated cars, and the BMT had 2,472 cars.
The new IND Eighth Avenue Line was built using of concrete and of steel. The roadbed of the new subway was expected to last 30 years. At the time of the line's opening, other portions of the Independent Subway System were under construction, including five underwater tunnels:

Cranberry Street Tunnel, long
Rutgers Street Tunnel, long
53rd Street Tunnel, long
Concourse Tunnel, long
Greenpoint Tube, long

There was some vandalism on the IND Eighth Avenue Line's opening day, as some of the uptown stations were broken into by people who clogged turnstile slots with gum and other objects. Two months after the IND opened for business, three exits from the 96th Street and 103rd Street stations – at 95th and 97th Streets and at 105th Street, respectively – were closed due to theft.

First branch lines

The Queens Boulevard Line, also referred to as the Long Island City−Jamaica Line, Fifty-third Street−Jamaica Line, and Queens Boulevard−Jamaica Line prior to opening, was an original line of the city-owned Independent Subway System, planned to stretch between the IND Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan and 178th Street and Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens.
The first section of the line, west from Roosevelt Avenue to 50th Street, opened on August 19, 1933. trains ran local to Hudson Terminal in Manhattan, while the ran as a shuttle service between Queens Plaza and Nassau Avenue on the IND Crosstown Line, which opened on the same day.
The Cranberry Street Tunnel, extending the Eighth Avenue express tracks east under Fulton Street to Jay Street–Borough Hall in Brooklyn, was opened for the morning rush hour on February 1, 1933. Until June 24, 1933, High Street was skipped.
The first short section of the IND Culver Line opened on March 20, 1933, taking Eighth Avenue Express trains south from Jay Street to Bergen Street. The rest of the line opened on October 7, 1933 to the "temporary" terminal at Church Avenue, three blocks away from the Culver elevated at Ditmas Avenue. In 1936, the A was rerouted to the IND Fulton Street Line and trains from the Queens Boulevard Line replaced them.

Second Manhattan trunk line, 1936–1940

The first part of the IND Sixth Avenue Line, or what was then known as the Houston–Essex Street Line, began operations at noon on January 1, 1936 with two local tracks from a junction with the Washington Heights, Eighth Avenue and Church Street Line south of West Fourth Street–Washington Square east under Houston Street and south under Essex Street to a temporary terminal at East Broadway. E trains, which ran from Jackson Heights, Queens to Hudson Terminal, were shifted to the new line to East Broadway. Two express tracks were built on the portion under Houston Street until Essex Street-Avenue A; the tracks were intended to travel under the East River and connect with the never-built IND Worth Street Line in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Just after midnight on April 9, 1936, trains began running under the East River via the Rutgers Street Tunnel, which connected the Houston-Essex Street Line with the north end of the Jay–Smith–Ninth Street Line at a junction with the Eighth Avenue Line north of Jay Street–Borough Hall. E trains were sent through the connection to Church Avenue. Simultaneously, the Fulton Street Line was opened to Rockaway Avenue and the A and C trains, which had used Smith Street, were rerouted to Fulton Street.
During construction, streetcar service along Sixth Avenue was terminated. The city had the choice of either restoring it upon the completion of construction or abandoning it immediately. As the city wanted to tear down the IRT Sixth Avenue Line right away and save on the costs of shoring it up while construction proceeded underneath it, the IRT Sixth Avenue Line was purchased for $12.5 million and terminated by the city on December 5, 1938.
On December 15, 1940, local subway service began on Sixth Avenue from the West Fourth Street subway station to the 47-50th Street subway station with track connections to the IND 53rd Street Line. The Sixth Avenue Line's construction cost $59,500,000. The following routes were added with the opening of service:

The AA Washington Heights Local was brought back for non-rush-hour service between 168th Street and Hudson Terminal via the Eighth Avenue Line.
The Washington Heights Local was added for rush-hour only service between 168th Street and Hudson Terminal via the Sixth Avenue Line.
The Bronx Concourse Express was added for service between Norwood–205th Street and Hudson Terminal via the Sixth Avenue Line.
service was cut back from Church Avenue to Broadway–Lafayette Street.
was added for service between Parsons Boulevard and Church Avenue via the Sixth Avenue Line.

Sixth Avenue express service would not begin until 1967, after the Chrystie Street Connection opened.

More branch lines open

The Fulton Street Line was opened from Jay Street to Rockaway Avenue on April 9, 1936, including the stub terminal at Court Street. A shuttle was operated between Court Street and Hoyt–Schermerhorn Streets.
On December 31, 1936, the Queens Boulevard Line was extended from Roosevelt Avenue to Kew Gardens–Union Turnpike.
The Queens Boulevard Line was extended to Hillside Avenue and 178th Street, with a terminal station at 169th Street on April 24, 1937. That day, express service began on the Queens Boulevard Line during rush hours, with E trains running express west of 71st–Continental Avenues, and GG trains taking over the local during rush hours. The initial headway for express service was between three and five minutes.
The entire Crosstown Line was completed and connected to the IND Culver Line on July 1, 1937, whereupon the GG was extended in both directions to Smith–Ninth Streets and Forest Hills–71st Avenue.
From April 30, 1939 to October 28, 1940, the Queens Boulevard Line served the 1939 New York World's Fair via the World's Fair Railroad. The World's Fair line ran via a connection through the Jamaica Yard and through Flushing Meadows–Corona Park along the current right-of-way of the Van Wyck Expressway. Despite calls from public officials such as Queens Borough President George Harvey to make the line a permanent connection to Flushing and northern Queens, the line was demolished in 1941.