Discover Vintage New York City Transit History at the Bus Festival

NEW YORK — A festival perfect for history and traffic enthusiasts will return this summer.

He New York Transit Museum Bus Festivalwhich features vintage buses, will take place June 10 at Emily Warren Roebling Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The event, which is completely free and will take place rain or shine, will allow visitors to explore buses from a vintage fleet, representing more than 90 years of transit history in the Big Apple. The festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the last entry time at 3:30 p.m.

Which vehicles will be seen at the festival? According to the museum, there will be a number of old buses that will be in the place. Among them will be:

• Among the vintage fleet, guests will be able to board the oldest bus in the museum’s fleet: “Betsy”, a 1931 double-decker bus. “Betsy”. or bus #1263, it was part of Fifth Avenue Coach’s “1200 series”. The 1200 series buses were among the last front-engined double-decker buses built by Yellow Coach. In 1936 the company introduced a new rear-engined design. However, the #1263 bus remained in service until 1947. Fifth Avenue Coach ended all double-decker bus operations in 1953.
• Another bus in the fleet has a connection to a classic sitcom that aired during the golden age of television. Designed exclusively for New York City, the #2969 (1948) bus was one of the first 40-foot long transit buses. It has a double-width front door to expedite the loading and unloading of passengers. It is also known as the “Jackie Gleason bus” as it was renumbered to match the bus the comedian was photographed on as his character on the 1950s series “The Honeymooners.” .
• The ubiquitous white and blue MTA buses with curved windshields that crisscrossed the city from 1979 to 2019 will also be part of the festival. How frequent were these buses? At one point they ran on almost every route (about almost 5,000 on the streets) until they were withdrawn. Bus #5249, from 1979, was one of the last diesel buses in the MTA fleet and the last RTS bus built for the MTA.

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