The Staten Island Railway (SIR) is a rapid transit line in the New York City borough of Staten Island. It is owned by the Staten Island Rapid Transit Operating Authority (SIRTOA), a subsidiary of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and operated by the New York City Transit Authority Department of Subways. SIR's only line operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, providing local service between St. George and Tottenville, along the east side of Staten Island. There is no direct rail link between the SIR and the New York City Subway system, but SIR riders do receive a free transfer to New York City Transit bus and subway lines and the line is included on official New York City Subway maps. Commuters on the railway typically use the Staten Island Ferry to reach Manhattan. The line is accessible from within the Ferry Terminal, and most of its trains are timed to connect with the ferry. In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday as of .
The railroad was incorporated in 1851 and was completed to Tottenville on June 2, 1860, as the Staten Island Rail Road. It was reorganized into the Staten Island Railway Company in 1873. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was operated successively by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and then the Pennsylvania Railroad. Under these companies' control, the SIR formerly operated two other branches for passenger trains: the North Shore Branch from 1886 to 1953 and the South Beach Branch from 1888 to 1953. SIRTOA was formed as subsidiary public benefit corporation in 1970 and took over operation of the Tottenville line in 1971 when it was purchased by the city of New York. The MTA rebranded the Staten Island Rapid Transit as the MTA Staten Island Railway in 1994.
The line has a route bullet similar to subway routes: the letters SIR in a blue circle. The line is one of the few 24/7 mass-transit rail systems in the United States. Although the railway was originally considered a standard rail line, the existing line is severed from the national rail system, and only a small portion of the former North Shore Branch still sees freight use. The passenger operations are regulated as a rapid transit system and exempt from some regulations. The line uses R211S subway cars, but uses R44s as a contingency fleet.
The railroad's main base of operations are at the Clifton Shops, located adjacent to the Clifton station that was once the original terminal of the railway.
History
19th century
The Staten Island Rail Road was incorporated on August 2, 1851, after Perth Amboy and Staten Island residents petitioned for a Tottenville-to-Stapleton rail line. The railroad was financed with a loan from Cornelius Vanderbilt, the sole Staten Island-to-Manhattan ferry operator on the East Shore, his first involvement in a railroad. The line was completed to Tottenville on June 2, 1860. Under the leadership of Vanderbilt's brother, Jacob H. Vanderbilt, the Staten Island Rail Road took over several independent ferries. The Staten Island Railway and ferry line made a modest profit until the explosion of the ferry Westfield at Whitehall Street Terminal on July 30, 1871. By July 1872, the railroad and ferry were in receivership. On September 17, 1872, the company was sold to George Law in foreclosure. The following April 1, the Staten Island Rail Road was transferred to the Staten Island Railway Company.
By 1880 the railway was barely operational, and New York State sued (through Attorney General Hamilton Ward) to dissolve the company in May of that year. Erastus Wiman, one of the island's most prominent residents, organized the Staten Island Rapid Transit Company (SIRT) on March 25, 1880, and partnered with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) to build a large rail terminal on the island and centralize the six-to-eight ferry landings. He secured an extension on a land-purchase option from George Law by offering to name it "St. George" after him.
Construction of the Vanderbilt's Landing-to-Tompkinsville portion of the North Shore Branch began on March 17, 1884, and the line opened for passenger service on August 1 of that year. The lighthouse just above Tompkinsville impeded the line's extension to St. George but, after the SIRT lobbied for an act of Congress, construction of a two-track, tunnel under the lighthouse began in 1885 for about $190,000. The SIR was leased to the B&O for 99 years in 1885. Proceeds of the lease were used to complete the terminal at Saint George, pay for two miles of waterfront property, complete the Rapid Transit Railroad, build a bridge over the Kill Van Kull at Elizabethport, and build other terminal facilities. The North Shore Branch opened for service on February 23, 1886, to Elm Park. The Saint George terminal opened on March 7, 1886, and all SIR lines were extended to the station. The remainder of the North Shore Branch, to its terminus at Erastina, was opened in the summer of 1886. On January 1, 1888, the South Beach Branch opened for passenger service to Arrochar. In 1893, the South Beach Branch was extended from Arrochar to a new terminal at South Beach. The new lines opened by the B&O were known as the Staten Island Rapid Transit Railway, and the original line (from Clifton to Tottenville) was called the Staten Island Railway.
In 1886, Congress passed a law authorizing the construction of a swing bridge over Arthur Kill, after three years of effort by Wiman. The bridge was completed three days early, on June 13, 1888, at 3 p.m. The Arthur Kill Bridge was the world's largest drawbridge when it opened, and there were no fatalities in its construction. In 1889, construction began on the Baltimore and New York Railway—a line from Arthur Kill to the Jersey Central at Cranford, and was finished later in the year. On January 1, 1890, the first train operated from St. George Terminal to Cranford Junction. When the Arthur Kill Bridge was completed, the United States War Department was unsuccessfully pressured by the Lehigh Valley and Pennsylvania Railroads to have the newly built bridge replaced with a bridge with a different design; according to the railroads, it was an obstruction to navigation of the large numbers of coal barges past Holland Hook on Arthur Kill. In 1897, the terminal at Saint George (which served the railroad and the ferry to Manhattan) was completed.
20th century Improvements were made to the SIRT after the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) took control of the B&O in 1900. On October 25, 1905, New York City took ownership of the ferry and terminals and evicted the B&O from the Whitehall Street terminal. The St. George Terminal was then built by the city for $2,318,720, .
In anticipation of a tunnel under the Narrows to Brooklyn and a connection there with the BMT Fourth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway, the SIRT electrified its lines with third rail power distribution and cars similar to those of the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT). The first electric train was operated on the South Beach Branch between South Beach and Fort Wadsworth on May 30, 1925, and the other branches were electrified by November of that year. Electrification did not greatly increase traffic, and the tunnel was never built. During the 1920s, a branch line along Staten Island's West Shore was built to haul building materials for the Outerbridge Crossing. The branch was cut back to a point south of the crossing after the bridge was built. The Gulf Oil Corporation opened a dock and tank farm along Arthur Kill in 1928; to serve it, the Travis Branch was built south from Arlington Yard into the marshes of the island's western shore to Gulfport in the early 1930s.
The Port Richmond–Tower Hill viaduct, the nation's largest grade-crossing-elimination project, was completed on February 25, 1937. The viaduct, more than a mile long, spanned eight grade crossings on the SIRT's North Shore Branch and was the final part of a $6 million grade-crossing-elimination project on the island which eliminated thirty-four crossings on its north and south shores.
Freight and World War II traffic helped pay some of the SIRT's accumulated debt, and the line was briefly profitable in the 1940s. All East Coast military-hospital trains were handled by the SIRT during the war, and some trains stopped at Staten Island's Arlington station to transfer wounded soldiers to a large military hospital. The need to transport war materiel, POW trains and troops made the stretch of the Baltimore & New York Railway between Cranford Junction and Arthur Kill extremely busy. The B&O also operated special trains for important officials, such as Winston Churchill. On June 25, 1946, a fire destroyed the St. George Terminal; three people were killed, twenty-two were injured and damage totaled $22 million. The fire destroyed the ferry terminal, the four slips used for service to Manhattan and the SIRT terminal. Normal service was not restored until July 13, 1946, and a request for bids to build a temporary terminal was issued on August 21 of that year. On February 10, 1948, a replacement terminal was promised by Mayor William O'Dwyer. The new $23 million terminal opened on June 8, 1951, with ferry, bus and rail service in one building; portions of the new terminal were phased into service earlier.
Ridership decreased from 12.3 million in 1947 to 4.4 million in 1949 as passengers switched from the rail line to city-operated buses due to a bus-fare reduction. In September 1948, about half of weekday trains were cut, night trains after 1:29 a.m. were cancelled, and thirty percent of the company's employees were laid off. After backlash, service was slightly increased. On September 22, the Interstate Commerce Commission allowed the SIRT to abandon the ferry it had operated for 88 years between Tottenville and Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and the ferry operation was transferred to Sunrise Ferries of Elizabeth, New Jersey on October 16. SIRT discontinued passenger service on the North Shore Branch and the South Beach Branch at midnight on March 31, 1953, due to competition from city-operated buses; the South Beach Branch was abandoned shortly afterwards, and the North Shore Branch continued to carry freight. On September 7, 1954, SIRT applied to discontinue passenger service on the Tottenville Branch on October 7 of that year; a large city subsidy allowed passenger service on the branch to continue.
In 1956, work began on the replacement of the Arthur Kill swing bridge by a single-track, vertical-lift bridge, which opened in August 1959. The prefabricated, 2,000-ton bridge was floated into place. The new bridge could rise and, since it aided navigation on Arthur Kill, the federal government assumed 90% of the project's $11 million cost. Freight trains started crossing the bridge when it opened on August 25, 1959. The Travis Branch was extended in 1958 to a new Consolidated Edison power plant in Travis (on the West Shore), allowing coal trains from West Virginia to serve the plant.
Operation of the Tottenville line was turned over to the Staten Island Rapid Transit Operating Authority (a division of the state's Metropolitan Transportation Authority) on July 1, 1971, and the line was purchased by the city of New York. As part of the agreement, freight on the line would continue to be handled by the B&O under the Staten Island Railroad. The first six R44 cars (the same as the newest cars then in use on the subway lines in the other boroughs) were put into SIRT service on February 28, 1973, replacing the ME-1 cars which had been in service since 1925. Between 1971 and 1973, a project began to extend the high-level platforms at six stations. A station-rebuilding program began in 1985, and the line's R44s were overhauled starting in 1987.