Vintage NYC buses take center stage at Transit Museum festival

Thousands of visitors flocked to the New York Transit Museum’s annual Bus Festival Sunday afternoon at Brooklyn Bridge Park, where the public got rare access to six of the museum’s vintage buses from a collection that exceeds 30. The centerpiece was Betsy, a double-decker coach that carried commuters along Fifth Avenue from 1931 to 1947. The sight of Betsy and her peers offered a tangible look at a bygone era of New York transit and the efforts to preserve it for future generations. Museum curator Jodi Shapiro framed the event as a window into urban mobility as much as a celebration of historical design: “I think that, especially for a kid, subways and buses are these magical things,” she told The Post, noting that the festival has drawn thousands of supporters for more than two decades. “There’s so many books, songs about [buses], and they just look really cool.”

Betsy’s fame at the festival speaks to the broader story of a two-decker era that defined city commuting in the early 20th century. Betsy transported large numbers of riders on Fifth Avenue before being decommissioned after only 15 years because maintaining two crews for each bus—the conductor and the driver—proved too costly. The bike-traffic era’s constraints, and the partial revival attempts in the 1970s that were hindered by practical issues like low-hanging traffic signals, helped seal Betsy’s fate as a historic artifact rather than a daily workhorse. The bus left the city in 1961 and spent time in Nevada, Alaska and even Toronto before returning to New York as part of the museum’s collection, most of which is stored in a Bronx depot.

Today, Betsy sits alongside several other notable relics and documented restorations. “Now that we have accordion buses, those can hold almost as many people,” Shapiro said of newer designs that replaced the vertical two-tier model, though she added that double-deckers still evoke a sense of charm not easily replicated by modern fleets. Attendees ranged from longtime transit enthusiasts to families, with some visitors sharing memories of riding the old buses or simply marveling at the engineering and styling that defined a city’s daily rhythms.

Among the other standout vehicles at the festival was a 1950s green-and-yellow bus that served as the first air-conditioned model in the United States when it debuted on Fifth Avenue. Its climate-controlled interior was a talking point for visitors who recalled summer commutes without today’s digitized amenities. A 2016 Ford F750 tunnel-scrubber truck also drew attention for its utility in maintaining the city’s transit infrastructure, while a swanky electric-blue 1969 Flxible Corporation bus spoke to the era’s design language and its reach across the Bronx and Staten Island due to a fleet capable of traversing steep hills.

Other highlights included a 1970s General Motors New Look fleet vehicle and several more buses from the 1970s and earlier. The mix illustrated how transit technology evolved—from the double-decker’s maximize-passenger approach to more modern, accessible configurations. A number of visitors paused to snap photos or lean in for a closer look, with even a few youngsters noting how a single ride could conjure memories of past decades.

Shapiro noted that the museum’s restoration work remains active, with several projects underway on buses from the 1940s and 1950s, as well as a double-decker from 1917 that has taken more than three years to rebuild. The museum works in partnership with the city’s transit agencies and preservationists, articulating a philosophy that when a bus or subway car becomes obsolete, preservation conversations begin early to identify what can be saved and how an artifact will be stored for educational purposes. “Things that are sort of different and rare, we always try very hard to preserve,” she said, adding that the orange subway cars slated for phasing out this year are another example of the museum’s inventory shifting with the times, even as it looks to the past for context and storytelling.

The festival attracted a broad cross-section of New Yorkers, from retirees who remember riding these buses to younger visitors curious about a pre-digital era of urban life. Regular attendees like 81-year-old Brooklynite Paul Haymont described the event as a chance to connect with a city’s evolving transit history. “Nobody’s putting the new ones in a museum,” he quipped, underscoring how public transportation can become a cultural artifact when kept on display. Visitors’ reactions often reflected affection for the era’s design cues—from the buses’ color schemes to the seating arrangements and the era’s advertising strategies.

For many, the festival offered a chance to imagine how different daily life felt when buses dominated city streets in bulk. Six of the museum’s buses—chosen to highlight diverse eras and guises—were opened for intimate walkthroughs, allowing curious patrons to inspect dashboards, seat fabric, and exterior styling up close. The museum’s curators used those walk-throughs to illustrate how vehicle design mirrored broader social and technological changes—from the advent of air conditioning to the transition from manually operated to more automated features.

The Brooklyn event is part of a broader, ongoing effort to preserve urban mobility’s material culture. Shapiro described a proactive stance toward conservation, emphasizing that the museum does not wait for artifacts to fail before acting. Instead, it engages transit agencies and preservation partners early in the process to safeguard equipment that offers tangible windows into the city’s past. The commitment is evident in the collection’s breadth—from a 1917 double-decker to postwar chassis and interiors that reveal shifting tastes, advertising, and passenger expectations. The preservation work, she explained, allows visitors to “go back in time without a time machine,” experiencing the evolution of public transportation in a way that is both educational and evocative.

As the festival wrapped, organizers signaled that more restorations are likely to come, ensuring the museum’s fleet remains a living archive rather than a static display. The experience underscores how transportation artifacts serve as cultural touchstones, reminding residents and visitors alike that the city’s public transit system has long been a dynamic engine of urban life. The Bus Festival’s success in drawing thousands year after year suggests a continuing appetite for this kind of public history, where people can literally walk inside history and reflect on how silhouettes of buses once painted the skyline of a city that never truly rests.