The Richmond Hill Line is a

surface transit A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is ...

line on

Myrtle Avenue Myrtle Avenue is a street that runs from Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn to Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill, Queens, in New York City, United States. Route description Queens Myrtle Avenue has been a major thoroughfare since the early ...

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

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 ...

. Once a

streetcar line A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...

owned by the

Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation The Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) was an urban transit holding company, based in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, and incorporated in 1923. The system was sold to the city in 1940. Today, together with the IND subway s ...

, it was replaced on April 26, 1950 by the B55 bus route. The trolley tracks were not removed until April 1955, when Myrtle Avenue was being repaved. The bus was renumbered on December 11, 1988 as the Q55 Myrtle Avenue (East)

bus route A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for ...

(as opposed to the B54 route on the western portion of Myrtle Avenue), operated by the

New York City Transit Authority The New York City Transit Authority (also known as NYCTA, the TA, or simply Transit, and branded as MTA New York City Transit) is a public-benefit corporation in the U.S. state of New York that operates public transportation in New York City. P ...

.Archer Avenue Changes
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Current route

The current Q55 route is identical to the route it used when it opened in 1950. The Q55 begins at the

Ridgewood Intermodal Terminal Ridgewood may refer to: Geography Australia *Ridgewood, Western Australia Canada * Ridgewood, Ontario * Ridgewood, Edmonton, Alberta United Kingdom * Ridgewood, East Sussex United States * Ridgewood Heights, California * Ridgewood, Illinois *Ri ...

at the Myrtle–Wyckoff Avenues Subway station on the Brooklyn-Queens border. It then runs via

, cutting through

Forest Park A forest park is a park whose main theme is its forest of trees. Forest parks are found both in the mountains and in the urban environment. Examples Chile * Forest Park, Santiago China *Gongqing Forest Park, Shanghai * Mufushan National Fores ...

, and continuing to

Jamaica Avenue Jamaica Avenue is a major avenue in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, New York, in the United States. Jamaica Avenue's western end is at Broadway and Fulton Street, as a continuation of East New York Avenue, in Brooklyn's ...

and Myrtle Avenue in Richmond Hill, where it meets up with the 121st Street subway station. In December 2019, the MTA released a draft redesign of the Queens bus network. As part of the redesign, the Q55 would have been replaced by a "neighborhood" route called the QT55, which would have been extended to Jamaica using Jamaica Avenue. The redesign was delayed due to the

COVID-19 pandemic in New York City The first case of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City was confirmed on March 1, 2020, though later research showed that the novel coronavirus had been circulating in New York City since January, with cases of community transmission confirme ...

in 2020, and the original draft plan was dropped due to negative feedback. A revised plan was released in March 2022. The planned changes to the Q55 are similar to those proposed in the 2019 plan.

References

External links

Richmond Hill Trolley Line on Myrtle Avenue (Richmond Hill Historical Society)
{{Brooklyn streetcar lines Streetcar lines in Queens, New York Q055 055