By 1839, tracks had been laid all the way to Harlem.

Horses, however, weren’t really a viable solution, either for trains or omnibuses. 1 Allen; a similar electrical substation remains at East 99th Street and Third Avenue, as does one on 57th Street between Lexington and Third avenues.

Before 1800, New York was so compact that mass transit wasn’t necessary. The term would later be extended to refer to the entire series of IRT gated cars.

This mobility was extremely popular to people; 14 million people took the el in 1878 alone. That our people will under take it merely proves the national recklessness.” Browne, arguing for change, opined that the “wonderful creature who renders street-railways impossible shall have a monument in Union Square higher than Washington’s, and be represented on two horses. Deep dives on cities, architecture, design, real estate, and urban planning.

Trains de banlieue. The first elevated trains, or “els,” ran in New York City on this day in 1878. The elevated trains continued to be slow and, due to the size constraints of the platforms, they couldn’t really expand their ridership. Inspired by successful pneumatic mail systems in London, in 1868, Beach convinced the state legislature to pass “An Act to provide for the transmission of letters, packages, and merchandise, in the cities of New York and Brooklyn, and across the North and East Rivers, by means of pneumatic tubes, to be constructed beneath the surface of the streets and public places in said cities, and under the waters of said rivers.”. One of the objections to Harvey’s original tracks on Greenwich Street had been how precarious the whole system looked. As early as 1870, the Times was noting the “constant stream of soot and ashes, destructive to furniture and clothing, and injurious to temper, if not to health.” In 1878, when the Brooklyn Daily Eagle interviewed shopkeepers along the route of the Third Avenue El, one noted: “I have nothing very flattering to say on the subject.

By 1832, the Evening Post was reporting “not much short of a hundred” coaches carrying passengers between Wall Street and other parts of the city.

However, Tweed at least acted the part of budding railway executive. This pattern repeated all over the city. When the New York Crystal Palace exhibition opened in 1853, Randel was there, promoting his “Model of an elevated railway for Broadway, or other crowded thoroughfares.” That same year, James Swett proposed an elevated scheme similar to Randel’s; however, while Randel’s trains would be run along a cable that was powered from the street, Swett advocated the use of steam-powered locomotives. For one low price a passenger could get on the train in Lower Manhattan and simply ride above the people and the horses until they got off at Central Park South or any other location on the nine miles of track. The term Manhattan El was derived from the Manhattan Railway Company, the predecessor railway to the IRT.
On average, the journey takes 4 hours and 9 minutes. As the Times reported in 1886: The west side of the city presents just now a scene of building activity such as was never before witnessed in that section, and which gives promise of the speedy disappearance of all the shanties in the neighborhood and the rapid population of this long neglected part of New York. The first segment of the line, with service at most stations, opened from South Ferry to Grand Central Depot on August 26, 1878.

These coaches, run by competing private companies, had haphazard and overlapping routes. Hoffman. Nearly every proposal was for a train running on Broadway. New York’s first transit system could have been the subway. The Evening Post praised the new system, highlighting the “efficacy, utility, comfort, and cheapness” of rail travel over the city’s alternatives. If you did, chances are good that the train went underground for at least part of your commute. Like Harvey, he had been forced out early on. However, an unspecified “accident to the machinery” pushed the trial run back a day. New York’s transit revolution began, inauspiciously, with a delay. Sleep is next to impossible.
Harper’s said the tracks hung so low “rain seldom falls” upon the street; at night, the darkness was a cover for undesirables— “unwashed, badly clad, sullen of aspect, moving in gangs.” The elevated tracks also served as boundaries, cutting off those who lived on one side of the tracks—such as the Jews of the Lower East Side—from the rest of the city and hemming in those who could not afford the 5-cent fare.

Though an outgrowth of Gilbert’s original “atmospheric” plan, the Sixth Avenue El relied on steam locomotion, and Gilbert himself was no longer involved. Eventually, business owners, architects, and landowners began to respond to the new realities of the elevated tracks.

Since the New York Central’s depot at 30th Street was the primary point of arrival for commuters from Yonkers and points north, the elevated immediately spurred an influx in suburban commuters. The merchants of Broadway had been adamant about keeping the street free from mass transit; now they found themselves missing out on the retail boom brought by the trains.

The smoke and steam are driven down and up against their windows, so that for most of the time they are compelled to keep them closed. A walk that would take hours now took a matter of minutes.

Though the elevated and the subway cost the same amount to ride—5 cents, a rate fixed by law—the subway offered a distinct advantage: speed. The el meant that one could live, work, shop, and play in different neighborhoods. The west side elevated, which would soon come to be known as the Ninth Avenue El, proved that it was daily office workers who needed and valued a good mass transit system.

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