The 60th Street Tunnel Connection or 11th Street Cut is a short rapid transit line of the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

connecting the

60th Street Tunnel The 60th Street Tunnel carries the of the New York City Subway under the East River and Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Queens. History Construction and opening The tunnel was built as part of the Dual Contracts, which expanded the ...

under the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...

(which connects to the

BMT Broadway Line The BMT Broadway Line is a rapid transit line of the B Division of the New York City Subway in Manhattan. , it is served by four services, all colored : the on the express tracks and the on the local tracks during weekdays (the N and Q trains ...

) with the IND Queens Boulevard Line west of Queens Plaza in

Long Island City, Queens Long Island City (LIC) is a residential and commercial neighborhood on the extreme western tip of Queens, a borough in New York City. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; New Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside to the ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The 11th Street Connection name comes from the street above the split from the 60th Street Tunnel. The line does not have any stations, and carries trains at all times but late nights.

History

The connection opened on December 1, 1955, and permitted BMT trains from Brooklyn to use the IND Queens Boulevard Line; the first service to do so was the ''Brighton Beach Local via Tunnel'' ( 1, now Q). This connection allowed for an increase of 20 trains per hour on Queens Boulevard. Unlike the later

Chrystie Street Connection The Chrystie Street Connection is a set of New York City Subway tunnels running the length of Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is one of the few track connections between lines of the former Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit ...

, this was of the nature of a

trackage rights Railway companies can interact with and control others in many ways. These relationships can be complicated by bankruptcies. Operating Often, when a railroad first opens, it is only a short spur of a main line. The owner of the spur line may con ...

operation, without the mixing of BMT and IND equipment or crews, as opposed to a true operating integration.

Service history

The first service to use the connection was the daytime 1 local via

Montague Street Tunnel The Montague Street Tunnel is a rail tunnel of the New York City Subway under the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, connecting the BMT Broadway Line and BMT Fourth Avenue Line. The R uses the tunnel at all times, the N us ...

, which became the QT in the early 1960s. The QT was rerouted to Astoria–Ditmars Boulevard on January 1, 1961, and the RR was sent through the connection during daytime hours. The EE was created on November 26, 1967, when the

opened and the RR moved back to Astoria. On August 27, 1976, the N was extended through the connection, absorbing the EE; this change sent late night and weekend trains through the tunnel for the first time. The N and R were swapped in Queens on May 24, 1987, taking the R through the connection in a move that reassigned a former BMT route (the R) to the IND's Jamaica Yard (it had heretofore used the Coney Island Yard). Late night service was later truncated to 36th Street in Brooklyn, then later extended to

Whitehall Street Whitehall Street is a street in the South Ferry/Financial District neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City, near the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The street begins at Bowling Green to the north, where it is a continuation of the ...

in Manhattan. The connection is not being used during late nights .

Routing

References

{{NYCS navbox Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation New York City Subway lines