The Dream of New York's Forgotten Elevated Subway | Hacker News Reader

The Dream of New York's Forgotten Elevated Subway

jalopnik.com

68 pointssamclemens26 comments

One of my favorite fun facts about this area of Brooklyn, is that there was an elevated train perpendicular to the one described here, that today would cut straight through Pratt’s campus, from north to south, and is the reason why there’s such a wide space between the boiler building and the engineering building. It connected the G line to EL. It was also surrounded by tenements, which were eminent domain’d (along with the elevated train line), so that Pratt could get a campus. That’s why Pratt’s campus is still a public park.

It’s interesting because it’s a perfect counterpoint to what the city planners of the era wanted to do with Washington Square Park (replace an existing green space with a mass transit hub). Here, they did the inverse.

> perpendicular

Neat trick. I think it was the proximity to elevated that made me do a double-take as to your meaning. I had visions of vertical trains, like those in sci fi (eg. 5th element).

The movie "The French Connection" was partially filmed around 86th Street in Brooklyn and featured an incredible car chase scene around the subway lines. Amazingly, the scene wasn't cleared by the city and there was a close call with at least one other car [1].

[0] https://youtu.be/IzEloJ5venk

[1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/entertainment/video...

The NYC blizzard of 1888 had a large impact on the city's decision to build subways which started construction in 1900.

https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/The_Blizzard_of_1888;_the_Imp...

We have elevated subways in Chicago. The red line is elevated and underground, depending on where you are.

Yeah, I think every line has elements that are elevated over streets as well as underground. And it's working fine, but that's because we fund them properly instead of closing them. ;)

By the way - CTA just released an update of their stunning "ride the rails" time-lapse videos filmed from the driver's seat. Really neat:

https://www.youtube.com/user/CTAConnections

Just the red and blue. The others all run elevated or at grade.

Berlin still has them! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxYiz4knmkU

If i understand correctly, one of the distinctive things about New York's elevated railways is that they ran on top of roads:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevated_railway#/media/File:R...

Whereas that line in Berlin looks like it's on a viaduct. Lines on viaducts are all over the place, including in London:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_%E2%80%93_Greenw...

As in Berlin, and i'm sure everywhere, the arches get used as commercial or industrial premises. We have a particular fetish for putting craft breweries in them:

https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2019/9/12/Londons-rail...

Paris too ! They are currently doing work on them and the operator has put some cool videos online : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKVTfpzx7XQ

Els running on traditional steel structures can be pretty noisy. Using concrete structures could cause a lot of shading to the streets below I feel.

I wonder why this system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Suspension_Railway has been used only once worldwide.

And so indeed does New York - sections of various lines run aboveground over the streets.

Parts of the BMT from this article still exist, but mostly aligned to and from Manhattan rather than across the borough itself.

I thought so. Reading this article I could have sworn there are of the subway to Queens from Manhattan being above-ground. Not sure why the article wouldn't mention that? The article is about New York, not Manhattan, so I'm not sure what they meant by a "forgotten" elevated subway.

There is a very interesting elevated transportation network in Xiamen, China (a city in Fujian, not far from Taiwan) which uses long buses with dedicated lanes. It works quite well and merges nicely with other traffic where needed, or during construction or maintenance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiamen_BRT

Big fan of BRT systems, but seems like they're mostly viable in places with low labour. Mexico City Metrobús bus surprisingly competent given it's conditions. Hope they have a future if self driving technology mature.

Chengdu has partially two levels of BRT. And the main layer is at the height of a 6th/7th floor. 2 winters ago I couldn't see the ground from the bus window because of air pollution. Apparently 6 floors is enough.

I wish these were still in vogue. Street running light rail feels pathetic by comparison; stopping at intersections misses the point of a train system.

Missing context from this article is that there was a whole trolley network which ran from lower Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge to what is today's Cadman Plaza park. The Myrtle el connected to this (I think the lines ran out along Myrtle and Fulton). Robert Moses "beautified" downtown Brooklyn by leveling much of the neighborhood at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge, including the trolley network. Devoid of the terminal, there was little value to the Myrtle Ave el. And the infrastructure was built to support trolleys, not the subway cars used throughout the rest of the system, so they would have had to rebuild much of the tracks to integrate into the existing network.

How fast does an elevated subway go?

China is developing low-speed maglevs.

In a decade or two perhaps the future will arrive and we'll be moving millions of people within cities at the incredible speed of 100-120 km/h.

Generally slower than underground ones, because of issues like noise.

Those things must have been noisy. Like bringing the Manhattan bridge to your own neighborhood.

But if they could make them quiet, I bet people would like them.

I had family who grew up near them... they aren’t as bad as you think.

They tend to be a natural anchor for a commercial street.

For me quiet would not be enough. Being under the tracks on the road is dark and depressing. I'd prefer the trains/subways underground. No noise and I can see the sky when above.

Think of it this way. Imagine a street with a lot of cafes with outdoor street seating. Now imagine building an elevated train over the street. I believe most people would no longer find the outdoor setting to be pleasant even if the train was quiet.

They still exist somewhat and definitely do rattle!

The popular High Line park in Manhattan was an elevated railroad (although freight, not subway).

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