Kingsbridge Road
Kingsbridge Road is an Express station served by all trains on the Concourse Subway Line. The stop feels fully like a subway station although at the southern end of the station the subway line goes over the Kingsbridge Road underpass, in an outdoor box sandwiched between the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road. This is one of two situations where the Concourse subway line goes above a roadway. It also happens when crossing over the Cross-Bronx Expressway (I-95) at the southern end of the 174-175 Streets Station. At this station, passengers can go exclusively downwards while leaving the station to one of the footpaths of the Kingsbridge Road's underpass.
The station has two island platforms for the three-track line. The track walls each contain a blue trimline with a blue boarder and Kingsbridge written below at regular intervals, there are exits via separate mezzanines, one above the tracks, one under the tracks at each end of the station.
The station's main entrance is located in a mezzanine BELOW the subway platforms. It received the station's token booth again around 2012, in anticipation of the opening of ADA accessible elevators in December 2014 at this entrance. Previously in the 1990s this entrance became part time, primarily due to safety concerns from the complex corridors that are required to reach the fare control area from various entrances. When I visited in 2011 it was unstaffed, with previously a Burgundy-Red Customer Assistance booth, with the entrance and full time both (now removed) at the northern end of the station.
For the Kingsbridge Road entrance three staircases and a new elevator lead down from each platform to this lower mezzanine, here a bank of turnstiles leads out to a complicated fare control area. Straight ahead of the turnstiles is a ramp that leads downwards to an entrance from inside the Kingsbridge Road underpass beneath the subway tracks. This tunnel has a sealed staircase that once led down to a further tunnel to an exit up to the south side footpath of the underpass (evidence of this sealed door is visible along the underpass) plus two long slabbed over staircases, that led up to the middle of the travel lanes for cars that once led up to boarding platforms in the middle of each underpass roadway for streetcar transfers. Streetcars stopped serving the station in 1948 (the station opened in 1933).
To reach the surface of Grand Concourse, further passageways lead east and west from the token booth. To the NE corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road's local ramp roadway is a long streetstair that stops at an intermediate landing plus the street elevator that opened around 2015. The street elevator is located in what was once the entrance to a former passageway that ramped up, to be above the Kingsbridge Road underpass and to a closed streetstair up to the SE corner.
There is a further open exit is accessed via a wide underground staircase on the western side of the fare control area that leads to a ramp to where the passageway splits into two. To the right a ramp continues to a staircase up to the NW corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Roads local ramp road. At the passageway split is a metal gate that closes off a now abandoned passageway that ramps up, over the Kingsbridge Road's underpass and to a now slabbed over at street level closed streetstair to the SW corner of Kingsbridge Road's ramp road and the Grand Concourse.
Starting at the northern end of the platforms, a single staircase leads up from the extreme northern end of each platform to a small, now unstaffed mezzanine area with turnstiles. In the 1990s, this mezzanine contained the full-time token booth and was open full time since it much simpler with fewer complicated passageways compared to the Kingsbridge Road exit. This mezzanine area provides a streetstair up to the SE corner of 196 Street and the Grand Concourse, with a ramped passageway leading up to a streetstair at the NW corner of 196 Street and the Grand Concourse
Photos 1-9: February 10, 2007; 10-38: January 6, 2011
