Why New York City Stopped Building Subways (Union, Madison: apartment, houses)
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In the first decades of the 20th century, New York City experienced an unprecedented infrastructure boom. Iconic bridges, opulent railway terminals, and much of what was then the world’s largest underground and rapid transit network were constructed in just 20 years. Indeed, that subway system grew from a single line in 1904 to a network hundreds of miles long by the 1920s. It spread rapidly into undeveloped land across upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs, bringing a wave of apartment houses alongside.Then it stopped. Since December 16, 1940, New York has not opened another new subway line, aside from a handful of small extensions and connections. Unlike most other great cities, New York’s rapid transit system remains frozen in time: Commuters on their iPhones are standing in stations scarcely changed from nearly 80 years ago.
Indeed, in some ways, things have moved backward. The network is actually considerably smaller than it was during the Second World War, and today’s six million daily riders are facing constant delays, infrastructure failures, and alarmingly crowded cars and platforms.
Why did New York abruptly stop building subways after the 1940s? And how did a construction standstill that started nearly 80 years ago lead to the present moment of transit crisis? Photo by Madison McVeigh/CityLab
Three broad lines of history provide an explanation. The first is the postwar lure of the suburbs and the automobile—the embodiment of modernity in its day. The second is the interminable battles of control between the city and the private transit companies, and between the city and the state government. The third is the treadmill created by rising costs and the buildup of deferred maintenance—an ever-expanding maintenance backlog that eventually consumed any funds made available for expansion.
To see exactly how and why New York’s subway went off the rails requires going all the way back to the beginning. What follows is a 113-year timeline of the subway’s history, organized by these three narratives (with the caveat that no history is fully complete). Follow along chronologically or thematically for the historical context of the system's sorry state, or use a playful “map” of the subway's decline. 1904: First subway opens
General Motors’ vision of the world to come at its Futurama exhibit, they didn’t see new trains and subways. Instead, they saw cars traveling quickly on wide new superhighways to bungalows in a bucolic landscape. The car was viewed as the height of modernity; many dismissed public transit as a grimy relic of an earlier age. The postwar federal government would spend what it took to make the suburban dream come true.
It's all about the money, or lack thereof. In what's already the highest taxed jurisdiction in the country, where are you going to get the money to fund expansion.
The pastor/priest has to bless the site to get rid of the boogeyman...
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Photo by Madison McVeigh/CityLab
