Deja Vu

January 5, 2009

Minding the Gap

Tags:

automotive,

commerce,

New York City,

railroads,

traffic,

transportation

“A Pitch for Mass Transit,” The New York Times, Jan. 4, 2009.

For years, the division of transportation money in Washington has heavily favored cars and trucks — more than 80 percent of the big transit money from gas taxes goes to highways and bridges, and less than 20 percent to railroads or mass transit. [Rep. James] Oberstar, D-Minn., is leading the charge to change that formula and divide this money a little more evenly. This will not be easy. Automobiles will be with us a long time, and old spending habits die hard. But as part of the stimulus package now under discussion for transportation, Mr. Oberstar is proposing $30 billion for highways and bridges and $12 billion for public transit. That is certainly a far healthier mix.

The new administration could further help mass transit by shelving the unfair “cost effectiveness index” that President Bush put in place several years ago for new transit programs. The net effect of this index was to make it easier to build highways and almost impossible to use federal money for buses, streetcars, light rail, trolleys — indeed, any commuter-rail projects.

I.

“The Pneumatic Dispatch,” by Alfred Ely Beach, Scientific American, Jan. 5, 1867.
Long fascinated by applied science and technology, the eccentric Alfred Ely Beach bought Scientific American in 1846. In 1869, he secretly built New York City’s first subway, the Beach Pneumatic Transit. Running for a length of 312 feet underneath Broadway, the single-car subway carried passengers for one city block. The subway was popular, but ultimately proved politically—and technologically—unfeasible. New York’s first “modern” subway, the IRT, opened for business in 1904.

The growth of the business and population of New-York City is wonderful. Twenty years ago we numbered less than four hundred thousand inhabitants, while to-day we have nearly one million, and if the same ratio of increase continues for twenty years longer, we shall then count three million. Already our streets are, spacious compared with many large cities, are over-crowded; public conveyances impede each other, and can only travel at slow pace. The carrying traffic has become so enormous, the number of men, horses, and vehicles so great, that they frequently blockade the streets, move with difficulty, and of necessity their charges are high. It costs more to carry a barrel of flour one mile within the streets than to transport it hither from the mills, distant two hundred miles….

II.

“Communication Between New-York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City,” by Alfred Ely Beach, Scientific American, Jan. 11, 1868.

An organization has been made for the purpose of procuring legislative authority for the laying down of tunnels, upon the general plan just described, between the cities of New-York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. The proposed tunnel will be cheap in construction, and is to have an interior diameter of about eight feet. The New-York termini are intended to be at or near the City Hall Park, the terminus in Brooklyn being at or near the City Hall, or the junction of Fulton and Court streets, a distance of just one mile. Trains of passenger-cars will pass through this tunnel, from end to end, in one minute, and will be propelled by atmospheric pressure. The cars will be of about the same dimensions as the ordinary street passenger-cars, will be brilliantly lighted, and run with very little noise or vibration. Experience has shown that air-pressure is preferred as a motor to locomotive or horse-power, as all jerking is avoided, and the atmospheric car glides along with a smoothness resembling that of a vessel upon the water.

The number of passengers now annually carried upon the ferry-boats between New-York and Brooklyn is 40,000,000, being an average of 110,000 per diem, or 10,000 passengers per hour, reckoning the day at eleven hours, during which period the great majority are at present carried.

In the transport of passengers through the proposed Brooklyn tunnel, trains, capable of carrying 1000 passengers, will be started from each terminus every five minutes. 24,000 passengers will thus be carried every hour, which is more than double the amount of transportation now required….

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