If only... In 1912, New York's MTA proposed a subway tunnel connecting Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue toStaten Island, which would have allowed "the other borough" to truly feel like part of New York City (map on right).
It wasn't for lack of trying. In 1923, the Brooklyn Transit Co. began digging a tunnel under Owl’s Head Park in Bay Ridge BK to connect the Fourth Avenue line to Staten Island off St. George. But 150 feet in, a lack of funds called off the project.
Again in 1929, a Staten Island-Bay Ridge subway link was considered (map above). The Depression neatly ended that attempt.
Once more, in the early 1960s, community leaders proposed adding subway tracks to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, then under construction. But anti-mass transit city leader Robert Moses, who was paid a hefty sum to maintain automobile traffic throughout New York (the same dude that wanted to cut a highway through both Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights), refused to hear of it. And so today, Staten Island is accessible only by car or the Staten Island Ferry. I've lived here 15 years; never been to SI.
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