Here are some quick fun MTA Bus Facts!
DID YOU KNOW? New York City buses do not accept paper money because NYC Transit uses giant vacuum hoses to empty fareboxes, a process that would shred bills.
Number of miles traveled by an average bus between repairs: About 4,704 in 2012.
Number of routes: There are 235 local routes; 64 express bus routes, and five Select Bus Service routes in the five boroughs.
Number of average weekday trips: Roughly 54,000 in 2012.
Number of bus stops: More than 15,000.
Longest rides: The longest local bus route is Staten Island's S78 at 19.7 miles between the St George Ferry Terminal and the Bricktown Mall in Charleston.
Ulmer Park Bus Depot
The Ulmer Park Bus Depot, at Harway and 25th Avenues, recalls an amusement park and beer garden that closed in the 1930s, and a Bushwick brewer whose brand is no longer produced.
Ulmer Park was the lark of William Ulmer, one of Brooklyn’s most successful brewers in an age where much of the nation’s finest beer was coming from the future borough. The German-born son of a wine merchant who learned the trade from his uncle, Ulmer opened his eponymous brewery in the 1870s at Belvedere Street and soon came upon the idea of opening a park as a way of selling more beer. (Not a bad idea. Jacob Ruppert would have similar designs in mind when he bought the New York Yankees in 1915).
The park would open in 1893 in Gravesend Bay along the southern shore of Brooklyn — back when there was an actual shore — between Coney Island farther south and the more conservative Bath Beach resort community to its west. Ulmer Park seemed to have more in common with Bath Beach — clean, family friendly (keep Dad happy so he keeps drinking!) with a beer garden, carousels and swings, rifle ranges, a dance pavilion and of course plenty of beachfront property.
The park seemed to be particular popular with Germans — Ulmer after all was German, and this was a beer garden — and particularly the annual ‘Saengerfest’ festival. A Times article even claims that 100,000 gathered at Ulmer Park for the end of one such festival.
Ultimately, neither the resort at Bath Beach nor amusements at Ulmer Park could compete with Coney Island which was about to enter its golden age in the early 1900s; apparently, it was grit and decadence people wanted in their summertime Brooklyn getaways. Ulmer closed in 1899.
The land remained a public space hosting baseball, cricket and track and field events. Eventually it was wiped away and redeveloped. It remains in name only, at the Ulmer Park branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and the name of the neighborhood bus depot.
