The Ego Trip Express

"Ditching" the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway

2010-11-18T14:45:00.001-05:00

So Gothamist and The Brooklyn Paper posted plans of covering the open cuts of the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway with parks, gardens, or high-tech trellises.

Image courtesy of The Brooklyn Paper

A thorough history of the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway can be found at NYCRoads.com.

But to illustrate the devastation wrought by the construction of this road, I've posted the images below showing this particular stretch of Brooklyn in 1924, 1951, and 2008.

1924:

1951:

2008:

Articulating the Need to Move Between Subway Cars

2010-11-10T15:03:00.001-05:00

So Ben at Second Avenue Sagas posted on the MTA's ban on riders moving between subway cars.

Does the MTA’s ban on inter-car travel make sense? Five years ago, MTA Board member Barry Feinstein defended the rule. “It’s dangerous. It’s not smart, and you shouldn’t do it,” he said. The number of people who get a ticket though far outweigh the one or two a year who suffer injury while switching cars.

The reasons for moving between subway cars are legion. Take Nora Hsu's story for example.

NY Post: Chad Rachman

An officer on patrol on the platform spotted her crossing and ordered her off the train.
"I told the cop, 'Cut me some slack. I'm 32 weeks pregnant, and I'm just trying to get home,' " she recalled for The Post. "I was out of breath."
But the officer said, "It doesn't matter," and wrote the ticket.

That got me wondering about articulated subway cars. That is to say, train cars that allow riders to go between them without ever physically stepping outside the train. And this led me to a post by Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic.

Though an MTA Metro-North Railroad spokesman told me that articulation would reduce seating and probably not meet FRA structural requirements, there are no such limitations for the city’s subway system according to Mr. Anyansi, and in fact, the city once had articulated cars in operation.

Such as the D-type Triplex:

Here we see the articulated joint between the two cars. A feature I hope to see in any future NYC subway rolling stock. A feature that Nora Hsu would've greatly appreciated.

The New Tappan Zee Bridge, Now With Rail

2010-10-17T21:01:00.001-04:00

Officials from NYSDOT, the MTA, and New York State Thruway Authority have announced that the Tappan Zee Bridge/Interstate 287 Corridor Project has narrowed the designs for a new bridge from six to the two that are rendered below.

Interestingly, there appears to be images of other plans or different sections of the two preferred plans on Nyack-Piermont Patch:

According to LoHud.com:

A new span to replace the soon-to-be 55-year-old Tappan Zee Bridge is just one part of the $16 billion project. It also would add bus rapid transit from Suffern to Port Chester along 30 miles of Interstate 287 and would call for the construction of a new passenger rail line across Rockland, over the new bridge and into Westchester onto Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line, ending at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.

The issue of how it will all be paid was addressed in Nyack News & Views:

NYDOT’s Phil Ferguson told the legislators he’s sticking with the project’s original $16 billion estimate — for now. But he cautions that the longer it takes to start the project the more it will cost. Ferguson says it’s important to position the project for future federal dollars like the proposed National Infrastructure Bank and look at value engineering to try to reduce costs.

There was also the reality check about pleasing all the people all the time:

Project Director Michael Anderson says that when the ribbon is cut for a new Tappan Zee Bridge sometime in the next ten years, the eight planned lanes won’t have enough capacity to support all of the cars, trucks and buses that want to cross the Hudson. But even if more lanes are added traffic would still be constrained by the roadways that feed the bridge. That’s why about half of the $16 billion planners are asking for the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 Corridor Project will be used to expand intra-county, inter-county and NYC-bound transit options. “We can’t build our way out of congestion,” he says.

It's not just the bottlenecks at feeder roads that will constrain traffic. It's the general principle of "traffic generation" that Robert Caro addressed in his biography of Robert Moses, "The Power Broker". Basically the theory postulates that the number of cars on the road is not a static number. When you add an extra lane, an extra bridge, and/or extra tunnel, it's just an invitation for even more drivers to use it. Nature abhors a vacuum.

All in all the plan is a refreshing return of the days when infrastructure was built to serve all forms of transportation. Robert Moses might be screaming curses, but Gustav Lindenthal might be wiping a tear of catharsis. Plan 5 is better because the lower level of the south span could double the number of trains in the future. Freight rail perhaps.

"Third Avenue Subway" (Route #3 from 1905)

2010-10-15T15:44:00.000-04:00

Supplementing the First Avenue Subway (Route #1) and—one would assume—eliminating the need for a 3rd Avenue Elevated, William Barclay Parsons designed a four-track subway to run under 3rd Avenue and Bowery. It's complicated set of tracks in the Bronx belie an ambition of the original transit planners; to have the city's subways operated by private railroad companies such as the New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad. In Midtown, there's also an interesting crosstown connection along 35th and 36th Streets.

Here is a comparison of the 3rd Ave and 2nd Ave Elevateds with the Subway. The 3rd Ave and 2nd Ave Els are in blue and Route #3 is in red. Much of 3rd Avenue shows up as purple.

Starting in the Bronx we see an interesting setup of tracks. The western branch makes a loop up and around Lincoln, Morris, and 3rd Avenues. A complicated array of spurs would have connected it to the then proposed 138th Street Line, which is now a part of today's Pelham Line operated by the #6 train. (On a side-note, reading through the description of these spurs, written in florid late-Victorian speech, was tedious to say the least.) Since the Pelham Line was built in the Dual Contracts period, it's within the realm of possibility that a future connection to an East Side Subway (whether along 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Avenues) was kept in mind by the builders. Over on the eastern branch, it would have run down Bruckner Boulevard then veered into the rail yards south of 132nd Street. This indicates a possible connection with the now defunct New York, Westchester & Boston Railway.*

*Fascinating thing about the NYWB. According to Clifton Hood's "722 Miles", they deliberately put their terminal at 132nd Street in the Bronx because it was assumed, around this time, that the 125th Street corridor would become a new central business district (CBD) just as 14th St, 23rd St, 34th St, and 42nd St would each acquire new importance as the city advanced north. This theory was based on the success of Pennsylvania Station (at 32nd Street) and Grand Central Terminal (at 42nd Street) which were both considered part of the outskirts of the young city. That is, until the city itself came northwards to their very doorsteps. This however did not happen to 125th Street, because the CBD would go no further than 59th Street; the foot of Central Park. Clifton Hood lays blame with the 1916 Zoning Laws, but perhaps the profitability of keeping the Upper East Side and Upper West Side as high-rise, residential/mixed neighborhoods stymied that northward expansion of strictly commercial space.

Route #3 crosses the Harlem River from Lincoln Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard to 3rd Avenue in Manhattan and the two 2-track branches merge into the 4-track trunk line making a straight shot down to Bowery...

...but with a very fascinating pair of spurs at 36th Street and 35th Street. They appear as hairlines on the map because they are in fact 1-track routes each. One track of rail for westbound trains along 36th Street and one track of rail for eastbound trains along 35th Street.

Here's a little preview of Route #5 (Broadway/Lexington Avenue Subway) in the original plan this route and the aforementioned spurs of Route #3 would have shared space between Lexington and Fifth Avenues.

The ultimate destination of these two spurs would have been 7th and 8th Avenue subways. The traffic along the 34th Street nowadays would have been greatly eased if these routes were ever made.

Back on 3rd Avenue we reach 14th Street where it would conveniently transfer with the existing 3rd Avenue station on today's Canarsie Line. I suspect that the Canarsie Line's 3rd and 1st Avenue stations indicate an investment in the future construction of Route #1 (1st Avenue Subway) and Route #3 (3rd Avenue Subway) more so than providing a transfer for the elevated lines. These plans laid out in 1905 indicate a long-term vision of eliminating all of the els in Manhattan.

Bowery has been one of the major thoroughfares for downtown for centuries, so it would be a natural location for a subway line. However with the emphasis put on 2nd Avenue instead, it was the blocks between Chrystie and Forsythe Streets that would be razed to make way for a subway/expressway combo. More on that in a future post.

South of Chatham Square, Route #3 splits into two branches. The east branch would continue to follow the 3rd Avenue El and serve a portion of Lower Manhattan that would no longer have rapid transit service since the elevated was torn down with no replacement. The west branch is effectively the Centre Street portion of today's BMT Jamaica Line (currently operated by J and Z trains). Between Pearl and Water Streets the two branches merge and continue down Broad Street, but then make a dramatic departure from the way the Broad Street line is now built. It veers west under South Street right along the shoreline and terminates in a hook shape under Battery Park. This terminal seems to skirt around the old South Ferry Loop and may have provided access to it's platform.

Digital Bulletin Boards for Subways

2010-10-08T13:51:00.000-04:00

In an effort to provide real-time information to riders, the MTA is installed large LCD monitors at Grand Central Terminal and Atlantic Terminal that display the constantly updated status of subways.

Dan Brinzac for the New York Post

Image courtesy of mta.info

MTA Chairman Jay Walder has been pushing for practical customer service in today's digital age since his arrival at the MTA. Technologies such as digital bulletin boards and countdown clocks can be found in subways and metros around the world.

Image courtesy of mta.info

The news from the New York Post:

The agency plans to outfit the entire transit system -- from trains to bus stops to even private businesses near bus shelters and subway entrances -- with digital screens that show real-time statuses of buses and trains, as well as service announcements.

For example, the screens -- a prototype of which is now being tested at Grand Central Terminal -- would note delays but also offer alternate train or bus routes for commuters.

New York 1 has a video rundown of the story

A new pilot program from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will use digital screens to alert subway riders to service disruptions and alternatives before they head to their stop.

While I commend his work in bringing the New York Subway into the digital age, I feel that the recent news that cell phone and possibly wi-fi service will be made available underground, is a better return-on-investment. Everyone checks their phones for updates on the minutiae of their daily lives; status updates, restaurant reservations, tweets, baseball scores, blogfeeds, etc. and there are countless mobile phone apps and app developers who want to meet those varied demands. They compete with one another to provide a better product or service. So why not do the same with subway and bus schedules, service changes and itinerary planning. Instead of making such large capital investments in big LCD screens, installing them, wiring them, and constantly maintaining them in all 277 underground stations, why not allow that info be delivered by mobile phone service providers who can then package/customize the information to the needs of an individual rider and compete with one another to keep the product fresh and useful. Have the LCD screens in high traffic subway stations, but not necessarily everywhere. And while subways and metros around the world have these screens available in almost every station, they do so because their investment in such technology predated the arrival of mobile information technology and new media. Here's my analogy; why wire a new, multi-story house with an expensive intercom system (à la "Home Improvement") when the residents will most likely "ping" each other from distant rooms/floors with the cell phones they carry around with them almost always.

Lifestyle Studio "Gytha" Opens on 92nd & Lexington

2010-10-07T12:38:00.004-04:00

My friend—designer and entrepreneur extraordinaire Niraj Parekh—has opened up a new "lifestyle studio" on the Upper East Side at 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue, just across the street from the 92nd Street Y.

"Step into my new store "Gytha" and you are spirited away to an exotic land, full of beautiful designs for your home and yourself!

A unique Lifestyle Studio that combines exotic, sumptuous and beautiful fabrics from all over the World and a collection of contemporary and antique jewelry, silk scarves and more..

Location - 1384 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y - 10128 (Between 91st and 92nd St) Across from 92Y Ph # - 212 289 4114"

Niraj Parekh on the left with your humble blogger.

I swung by the store after seeing the video below. The staging of the shop is great, I love it's intimate scale and the way all the fabrics and textiles create such texture on the walls.

Here's a great video introduction to the new store.

I applaud Niraj for coming this far after arriving here in the States just four years ago. Please come by for a visit whenever you can, if only to see the beautiful handmade jewelry designed by the proprietor himself.

No Pain, No Train on 2nd Avenue

2010-10-06T14:11:00.005-04:00

It took close to 90 years to get this far in the construction of the 2nd Avenue Subway, but now it feels like the construction itself will take another 90 years. In the meantime many stores at the are launch box site are shuttering.

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

This is a great image above. It's such a contrast from the clean, rosy illustrations rendered in the early EIS reports.

Now, this isn't news. For years since the April 12, 2007 groundbreaking of Phase 1, the media has discussed the tribulations in store for the Upper East Side.

Jackie Ladner for New York Magazine from 2008

But what troubles transit advocates and rail fans is the time and treasure needed to get just Phase 1 done. The IRT was built from City Hall to 145th Street in four years, from groundbreaking 1900 to opening in 1904. The pace of construction was more or less kept in the boom years of subway construction. This could have been accomplished because of the circumstances of the time, such as cheap labor, no OSHA, lower cost of materials (no BRIC countries and oil sheikdoms to compete for scarce resources), fewer regulations, etc. However, the method of construction employed by the IRT, BMT, and IND—namely cut-and-cover—was far more invasive and disruptive, but could accomplish the task faster because long stretches of subway could be built in a single go. Plus express tracks could be added.

In contrast the 2nd Avenue Subway will be built using a TBM, the world standard nowadays. But it will use just one TBM that will go south from 96th Street to 63rd Street to carve out one tube and backtrack up to 96th Street to complete the second tube. The analogy I make is "typing out War and Peace...one hand at a time."

In the meantime, business close or barely skim the bottom. The city as whole pensively waits to see if this thing will actually get done and if this is the way subway construction will be from now on.

Subterranean Cell Phone Service You Say?

2010-10-04T13:49:00.008-04:00

Image courtesy of thenextweb.com

Love or hate the prospect of it...underground wireless reception for the subway may have taken a significant step forward according to Businessweek.

"AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA customers will have mobile-phone service on New York City subway stations after the carriers signed 10-year agreements to access an underground network being built by Transit Wireless LLC."

Image courtesy of dnainfo.com

It has long been a big idea, but one taken with the dreadful prospect of the unleashing of thousands of cloying chatterboxes and neurotic attention-whores. Those of us who frequent the above ground portions of the subway system can attest to this at some level. Some—not all, some—chat loud, some chat long, and a rare few chat with the desperation of someone terrified of being alone with one's own thoughts, but it is not a mindless din of shouting matches coming from all sides. Now, with that said, there is no telling what Brownstone Brooklyn and Manhattan commuters are capable of when given license to make a phone call whenever and wherever at their own discretion.

Image courtesy of cbsnews.com

On the flip-side the sheer practicality of being able to be in touch in an emergency or when delayed. Plus there's an added advantage of having text message alerts be sent out for sudden service changes as well as subway train ETAs. Imagine a planned trip on the #6 on a weekend in winter. You check your phone for next arriving train. 15 minutes it says. Time better spent getting a cup of coffee and keeping toasty inside and above ground until your train is close to arriving. How much more efficient is this compared to having to wire, install and maintain electronic signs in each and every subway station when practically each and every rider has a portable "electronic sign" in their pockets. Efficiencies, streamlining, economies-of-scale. This the way to run a railroad.

Image courtesy of gothamist.com

Speaking of which, Michael Klurfeld at thenextweb.com makes an great observation on just how is thing going to be paid.

"What’s interesting about this particular network buildout is the funding scheme. New York City is not paying a dime of tax money for this. In fact, Transit Wireless is paying New York $46 million to install these devices. The money is coming from the wireless providers. Carriers who want their customers to have service in the station will have to pay a fee to TW.

The brilliance in this is in the marketing. Basically, if one carrier starts to pay for this service, New Yorkers who don’t want to be incommunicado while in transit are going to jump ship. The rest of the carriers know this. So they’ll start paying to use Transit Wireless’ service. So unless AT&T wants to lose its New York clients to Sprint, it’ll buy in for at least the same amount of coverage Sprint offers."

I do love it when good old fashioned marketing, incentives, and payment schemes can net out such benefits for the public. Very reminiscent of the brilliant idea of having Spanish firm Cemusa install and maintain bus shelters and newstands out of their own pockets in exchange for all revenues from the selling of advertising space on the said installations.

Now with all that said, I say bring it on. Just make sure you have your music player charged and good pair of headphones handy or those noise-canceling headphones available when those one-sided conversations start. Just sayin'.

I.M. Pei's Hyperboloid vs. Grand Central Terminal

2010-10-01T15:03:00.004-04:00

Take I.M. Pei's plans with a mix of relief and regret. Imagine an alternative-universe New York City, where a hyperboloid skyscraper; a narrow, vase-shaped tower stands proudly over the Midtown skyline. Standing haughty, unique, and unforgettable—right on top of what used to be Grand Central Terminal.

The video is beautifully done and it certainly does more justice to the building than any of the renderings I've seen of it. (And I do like the creative touches the director added like the kitschy, Mad Men interior decorating from 1:36 to 1:49.) Perhaps Robert Moses would have approved the plan if he saw that video instead of the image below. And thus, would have probably made this the most hated building in NYC.

The plans for I.M. Pei's Hyperboloid date to 1956, which by my account predates Charles Luckman's plans for replacing Penn Station with the latest incarnation of Madison Square Garden. Strange to think of an alternative universe where the public outcry toward the demolition of Grand Central Terminal lead to the survival of Penn Station. And as the sun rises on this New York, long shadow of the Hyperboloid is cast over the granite eagles of Penn Station. It seems that one of them had to be martyred for the cause of landmarks preservation.

It would still be a nice building to have...off of any priceless, well-maintained and irreplaceable landmarks thank you very much. An ongoing discussion about the building can be found on this forum.

Nation Building?

2010-09-30T08:09:00.001-04:00

Red Hook Trolley Redux

2010-09-29T15:21:00.003-04:00

So, a few weeks ago there was once again talk of reviving the old Red Hook trolley plan.

This was a plan that I had seen come and go for years, but now there could be real hope that it'll come to fruition. And that's mostly due to the credibility of NYCDOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan's ability to actually get things done.

She was instrumental in closing off Broadway in Times Square and Herald Square to create pedestrian plazas. These were not new ideas, for they had been pushed for years by safe streets advocates. Ideas discouraged by powerful and influential special interests as well as some anachronistic, unimaginative, but nonetheless powerful politicians. Then, soon after Ms. Sadik-Khan was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg, the NYCDOT began flexing it's muscle and using it's untapped resources and influence to present big, ego tripping plans to carve out enforced bus lanes, protected bike lanes, and pedestrian plazas out of the city's streets. Effectively reclaiming them from the automobile; an impossible feat just a few years ago.

The MTA and NYCTA were not mentioned at all, which brings up speculation that any new streetcars would be under NYCDOT's control. Given this scenario and the Taxi and Limousine Commission's operation of the private van system, we might see the return of some level of healthy competition in mass transit that hadn't been seen since World War II.

There's Something Special in the Air

2010-07-23T12:59:00.017-04:00

In lieu of the proliferation of satellite photos on my blog, I had to mention this.

Untapped New York and Gothamist just posted a image of a commercial airplane that got captured by a satellite camera just as it passed over Bushwick.

Well I see your Bushwick flyover, and raise you a silver bird coming in for a landing at Prospect Park:

View Larger Map Driving Directions View Bird's Eye

-"Uuuhhh...Propect Park we're...uuuhhh...coming in for a...uuuhh...landing."
-"Roger, you are clear for Long Meadow."

"Ninth Avenue Subway" (Route #2 from 1905)

2010-06-08T15:46:00.042-04:00

The next route William Barclay Parsons, Chief Engineer of the Rapid Transit Commission laid out while the IRT was being constructed was one that would weave through northern Manhattan, run down 9th Avenue, then veer west right up against the waterfront along West Street. Like the First Avenue Subway (Route #1), the Rapid Transit Commission and Public Service Commission did not consider it a priority (most likely because of the existing 9th Avenue elevated) and kept the plans on the back burner. The IND however would give life to certain stretches of it. Read more after the jump.

This line was most likely intended to replace the 9th Avenue Elevated whose alignment Route #2 mimics from 110th Street to Gansevoort Street. Route #2 is indicated in red and the 9th Ave el is in blue.

In upper Manhattan, the IND's route seems to cover more territory, but the hilly topography of upper Manhattan is such, that a walk up a block could feel like a mile. (Or at least that's the impression I get whenever I go up there.) If anyone from the neighborhood can say that Parson's plan is better than the IND's plan, then by all means expound.

The Route #2 would be mimicked by the IND from 173rd Street to 124th Street. From there it runs diagonally under Morningside Park to Columbus/9th Avenue where it would run under or entirely replace the 9th Ave El.

At Gansevoort Street, Route #2 takes a radical departure and runs beneath West Street, right up against Hudson River shore. Perhaps it was intended to serve New Jersey ferry commuters and longshoremen working the docks.

Finally, it turns east into Battery Place where it seems to meet with the terminal of the First Avenue Subway (Route #1). It's interesting to imagine perhaps a through terminal where trains could run back and forth from 9th to 1st Avenues.

"First Avenue Subway" (Route #1 from 1905)

2010-05-15T14:24:00.121-04:00

The first route William Barclay Parsons (Chief Engineer of the Rapid Transit Commission) laid out while the IRT was under construction would have stretched from Claremont Park in the Bronx, run southwards to 1st Avenue, make a straight shot to the Lower East Side, and then weave it's way to the Financial District. His bosses at the Rapid Transit Commission (and it's successor, the Public Service Commission) considered the route worthwhile, but not crucial in the near term. The plan was put on the back burner with some southern stretches being adopted into the Board of Transportation's IND system in the 1930's. To this day there is no other subway line to supplement the IRT East Side (the Lex) as it runs through the dense east side of Manhattan north of Houston Street. Read more after the jump.

The 1st Avenue subway may have originally been intended to replace the elevated trains that used to run above 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue. Here is a map highlighting the routes to each other. The 2nd and 3rd Avenue els are in blue and Route #1 is in red.

So this was "Route No. 1" according to Mr. Parsons. The four tracks under the Bronx indicate that the line could have run as a local further north.

In Manhattan, the line doesn't veer from it's route even as it comes close to the shore.

I had once heard that a 1st Avenue subway would be prohibitive nowadays because of it's proximity to the UN. I would think that the UN would like to have convenient subway access.

Here Route #1 intersects with the 1st Avenue station on the Canarsie Line (L train). I had assumed that city built stations at 3rd and 1st Avenues on the Canarsie Line to serve the old elevated trains on 3rd and 1st Avenues. Now I suspect that the city—whose intentions were see the old els torn down—was actually anticipating the arrival of a subway under 3rd and 1st Avenues. I'll discuss the 3rd Avenue Subway (Route #3) in a future post.

An interesting prelude for the future are the plans for Houston and Essex Streets. Plans that would be incorporated into the Board of Transportation's IND system. Even Route #1's alignment under Madison Street would be later mimicked by unfulfilled plans for an East Broadway subway.

South of that the line would service Beaver Street and possibly linked up to the Greenwich Street subway now operated by the 1 train.

The 1905 vision of Manhattan and the Bronx

2010-05-05T14:52:00.038-04:00

Long before the IND or BMT came into the picture—indeed literally at the dawn of subway building in New York—William Barclay Parsons was already engineering the encore to his "Rapid Transit Railroad" aka the Interborough Rapid Transit system, the first leg of our Subway system. Read more after the jump.

This map is from the "Railroad Gazette, 1907" posted online courtesy of Google Books.

Here the different routes are highlighted in colors that best interpret how the lines turned out today. In light gray are the old elevated lines, the already built IRT Subway and H&M Tubes.

Though narrower in scope compared to the Turner Plan and IND Second System, this does constitute an ambitious agenda given that Contract One was under construction and therefore built with these extensions in mind. (Contract One was finalized in 1897 and Contract Two which would extend the IRT north to Van Cortlandt Park and south to the LIRR's Atlantic Terminal was finalized in 1902). Missing from map is Brooklyn which saw an interesting and large series of "loops" (I put it in quotes because "loops" is used liberally by Parsons to describe both the small turnaround loops and massive circuitous routes).

Like the original IRT, this plans uses a lot of sharp curves and turnaround loops. There is also in significant density of parallel routes. This redundancy is often blamed on the competitive nature of the IRT and BRT/BMT, but every route was laid out by the government appointed committee without any previous bias (as far as I know) and the IRT had a monopoly on operation. The density of routes seems to me a desire on Parsons' part to eliminate as much surface transit as possible as well as good old fashioned Capacity Planning for future demand (which the current 7 train extension and 2nd Ave Subway seems to lack..ugh). Also you'll notice how lines in the Bronx, especially in the southwest, seem to stop dead before going any further north. They are in fact the intended connections to the existing railroad systems. Clifton Hood in his seminal work "722 Miles" described how the Rapid Transit Commission and later Public Service Commission had tried to persuade the existing private railroad companies (like the Pennsylvania RR, NY Central, B&O, et al) to add intracity transport to their intercity network. (I hope to cite examples of potential connections in future posts detailing the specific plans of Parsons' design).

One can also see in this map the shape of things to come. You can already see the beginnings of the Dual Contracts and IND systems. I hope to post images and Google Map mashups of the specific routes of this plan in the future. Enjoy.

"1905 Route #9: Brooklyn & Manhattan Loop Line - Trackage" on the mend

2010-04-27T07:29:00.004-04:00

It's a complicated setup that the esteemed Mr. Parsons and company had drawn up in 1905. While initially I had just laid out the route after eye-balling the line drawing map that came with it, I had always intended to assign the text of each description to it's appropriate section. Which given Google Maps' constraints would involve recreating each line. Promise to have the route up and ready as soon as possible. And later on, an amalgam of all of the planned routes of 1905 into one map.

The Dual Contracts' "Second System" from 1920

2010-04-23T10:34:00.014-04:00

And you thought the IND's Second System was huge. This, my friends is thus far the trippiest of the ego trips I've come across. It covers the ENTIRE city, ALL five boroughs including the waterfront of Hudson County, NJ (to be discussed in a future post). This map was included in the second of two New York Times' articles on the plan. What I love is that this wasn't submitted by some advisory panel or consulting engineer, but by the subway builders' themselves. It was completed by "Daniel L. Turner, chief engineer in the office of John H. Delaney, Transit Construction Commissioner":

Click on the "View Full Article" link below each to see a scanned pdf of each. Courtesy of the New York Times.

September 26, 1920: "$350,000,000 PLAN FOR SUBWAY ROUTES HAS BEEN COMPLETED; 830 Miles of New Track to Carry Five Billion Passengers a Year Contemplated."

October 3, 1920: "CITY'S GROWTH DISCOUNTED IN PLANS FOR ADDING 830 MILES OF TRACK TO RAPID TRANSIT SYSTEMS; Work to Cover Period of Twenty-five Years and Cost $350,000,000--New Lines and Extensions Would Provide for a Population of Nine Millions and Carry Five Billion Passengers"

I really like the way Daniel L. Turner thinks. He espouses the famous maxim attributed to Chicago city planner Daniel Burnham, "Make no small plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood". (I wonder if the two Daniels ever knew each other.) The goal of the plan was to ultimately eliminate all surface transit with elevateds, open-cuts, or subways as well as underground moving sidewalks (which had lately received much notoriety in the blogosphere). Many of the routes or their corridors in Manhattan, southern/western Bronx, and Brooklyn where already planned for rapid transit back in 1905 by William Barclay Parsons. The lines going to northeastern Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island were laid out first by Alfred Craven and then Mr. Turner. Later the Board of Transportation's IND would seemingly grandfather-in many of their plans from Turner's. (Notice what would be today's Culver IND and Fulton IND, but with notable exception is Queens Boulevard.)

My only criticism of Turner's plans is the insistence on parallel routes. It would have been better to mimic the pattern of railroad building and create multiple hub and spoke routes. The hubs around NYC include the downtowns of Flushing, Jamaica and Brooklyn plus Long Island City, Broadway Junction (BK), South Bronx, and St. George (SI).

If, nowadays, the city, state, and the MTA can get past their endless series crisis management, then a "100 Year Blueprint" on this scale should be produced and adhered to like a city charter.

Oh, you know I'm gonna create a Google Map of this. If anyone has more detailed information on the plans, please post them and give me a heads up.

Walkability and the Le Corbusier superblock

2010-04-21T13:30:00.005-04:00

Streetsblog brings up the topic of increasing walkability in NYC.

One project towards that goal is the restoration of 129th Street through the St. Nicholas Houses:

One agency that's doing some interesting work to connect housing policy with urban design is the New York City Housing Authority. NYCHA General Manager Mike Kelly pointed to a site where enhancing walkability is also helping to add and improve housing. At the St. Nicholas Houses in Harlem, NYCHA plans to restore the street grid to a towers-in-the-park superblock, extending 129th Street from Frederick Douglass Boulevard to Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard.

IMO, restoring the road without restoring the "streetwall" would be better for cars than people.

People have opinions about the whole mission of public housing, however Le Corbusier's saving grace may be all that green space. They're extra lungs for a neighborhood, before which there was none.

In a "satellite" photo of Downtown Brooklyn from 1924—long before Cadman Plaza and MetroTech—the area is thick with buildings with little if any greenery:

Plus they provide a shelter, for those within, from the demolition derby of the road.

They're very pedestrian friendly, but if we want walkability then allow the ground floor the buildings to be rented out for shops. Or if we're going to restore the road, then restore the original streetwall.

G Train as it could have been

2010-04-15T23:37:00.001-04:00

In honor of the permanent change in the routing of the G train, I present to you the B'klyn–Queens Crosstown as it could have been:

Lost Parks of New York: Parade

2010-04-13T09:34:00.002-04:00

Now this would have changed the nature of Midtown. Imagine everything from Madison Square to Herald Square and from Murray Hill to Penn Station—all park land. All that remains of it is Madison Square Park. As it's name implies, Parade would have served primarily as parade grounds for military exercises, drills and pageantry. Like armories they would eventually be used by cities for more civilian purposes. Like "Market Place", I like the name "Parade". It seems down-to-earth and to-the-point. Perhaps later on some bombastic committee of city patricians would successfully petition to have it renamed.

Lost Parks of New York: Market Place

2010-04-12T11:41:00.002-04:00

All that remains is Tompkins Square. Would've added a lot of green to the Lower East Side. I rather like the name Market Place, it seems to hearken back to the pre-modern tendency to name parks and commons to be descriptive or even utilitarian rather than commemorative. Makes me imagine merchants, artisans, hucksters, itinerant performers and such, all gathered under the eaves and lanes of Market Place.

More on Tompkins Square Park at NYC Dept. of Parks & Recreation.

Lost Parks of New York

2010-04-12T11:15:00.001-04:00

Behold the greenery that could have been had the corrupt politicians out of Gangs of New York not run this city.

The NYC Dept. of Parks & Recreation website had the foresight to present "Parks for the New Metropolis (1811–1870)" to inform and enlighten us on the history of parks in NYC.

IND Second System Map 1929 plan

2010-04-10T08:38:00.001-04:00

So this will be my first post for Ego Trip Express. I'll begin this blog as a means to display the Google Maps I've made that lay out the bygone plans in New York City.

I'll start with the most famous of them, the "IND Second System". A very comprehensive entry in Wikipedia goes into detail about it.

The map below is interactive, if you click on a line it'll describe the details of it. You can also click on the link just below it to open it in Google Maps itself and turn on "Transit" to compare it to the existing system. Unfortunately Google Maps has yet to allow embedding of it's Transit overlay into sites outside of Google Maps.

I'll be going into detail on the features of the plan and post other maps and links to Google Books as time goes by. Thank you and enjoy.