The Suffolk Traction Company is a former

streetcar A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some include s ...

system in

Suffolk County, New York Suffolk County ( ) is the easternmost county in the U.S. state of New York, constituting the eastern two-thirds of Long Island. It is bordered to its west by Nassau County, to its east by Gardiners Bay and the open Atlantic Ocean, to its no ...

. It operated primarily between Patchogue and Holtsville, but also included a route that served Blue Point, Bayport, and

Sayville Sayville is a hamlet and census-designated place in Suffolk County, New York, United States. Located on the South Shore of Long Island in the Town of Islip, the population of the CDP was 16,569 at the time of the 2020 census. History The earlie ...

. It was opened in 1909 and ceased operations in 1919.

Main Line

The four current roads that originally carried the trolley line between Patchogue and Holtsville are South Ocean Avenue, North Ocean Avenue, and what today is Old North Ocean Avenue. The PD Tower at Patchogue Railroad Station served as a control tower for both the Long Island Railroad and the trolleys. Traction Boulevard (also known as Suffolk Traction Boulevard) continued the line, which crossed over the southeast corner of Canaan Lake and headed in a northwesterly direction. North of the Patchogue Highlands area, the paved road became a dirt trail and carried the former ROW towards Holtsville Station. The trolleys that used the road were storage battery cars that ran down the center of the street. North of Holtsville, Suffolk Traction planned an extension through Farmingville, Selden, Terryville,

Echo In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the lis ...

(now Port Jefferson Station), and eventually

Port Jefferson Port Jefferson, also known as Port Jeff, is an Administrative divisions of New York (state)#Village, incorporated village in the Administrative divisions of New York (state)#Town, town of Brookhaven, New York, Brookhaven in Suffolk County, New Y ...

. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt, even as a bridge was being built over the LIRR Main Line for the Suffolk Traction Main Line on the way to Port Jefferson. The ROW was abandoned, and much of it was sold to private and public developers later in the 20th century, although the road was still depicted on numerous maps. The dirt trail was visible where it crossed Woodside Avenue and then disappeared entirely at the latter-day site of the town dump where it was obliterated (see below). It picked up again in the woods on the east side of Waverly Avenue just south of Katz's Farm which was located directly south of the LIRR station in Holtsville. The ROW ran along the edge of Katz's Farm so was not discernible. The Town of Brookhaven installed a landfill on part of the former ROW, leaving a portion of it as an entrance at Blue Point Road. The landfill was transformed into a town park in the early to mid-1970s. During a 2009 repaving project of North Ocean Avenue by the Village of Patchogue Department of Public Works, the former trolley tracks were uncovered and removed for preservation.

Other branches

Besides the main line, Suffolk Traction Company had the Bayport- Blue Point Line between

Sayville Railroad Station Sayville is a station on the Montauk Branch of the Long Island Rail Road in the hamlet of Sayville, New York, on Depot Street between Greeley Avenue and Railroad Avenue. Ferries to Fire Island board from a nearby port located to the station's so ...

and Patchogue at

Bicycle Path A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. ...

, a section of which is currently

NY 112 New York State Route 112 (NY 112) is a state highway located entirely within the town of Brookhaven in Suffolk County, New York, in the United States. It runs from an intersection with East Main Street (former NY 27A) in the vi ...

. The line was originally owned by the

South Shore Traction Company The Manhattan and Queens Traction Company, also known as the Manhattan and Queens Transit Company, was a streetcar company operating in Manhattan and Queens County, New York between 1913 and 1937. History The Manhattan and Queens Traction Compa ...

and ran primarily along Middle Road, Blue Point Avenue, and

Montauk Highway Montauk Highway is an east–west road extending for across the southern shore of Long Island in Suffolk County, New York, in the United States. It extends from the Amityville, New York, Amityville–Copiague, New York, Copiague line, where ...

. It served the LIRR stations in Sayville, Bayport, Blue Point and Patchogue. A proposed eastbound extension into Bellport and Brookhaven was also on the books, but collapsed along with the Port Jefferson extension of the main line. A third line called the Sayville Line ran exclusively within Sayville, from the Railroad Station along Sayville's Railroad Avenue, Montauk Highway, and Candee Avenue down to the

Great South Bay The Great South Bay is a lagoon situated between Long Island and Fire Island, in the State of New York. It is about long and has an average depth of and is at its deepest. It is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by Fire Island, a barrier island ...

. This line was originally a horse-drawn trolley, and like the Sayville to Patchogue Line, it was originally owned by the South Shore Traction Company.

Main Line

Other branches

References

External links