NYC Subway Turning 100

[GaryMrMets]

Today in History - October 27

Today's Highlight in History

One hundred years ago, on Oct. 27, 1904, the first rapid transit subway, the IRT (which stood for "Interborough Rapid Transit"), was inaugurated in New York City by Mayor George B. McClellan. The fare: five cents.


Group of financiers take a tour of New York City's subway, 1904.

http://wfan.com/water/watercooler_story_298110139.html

NYC Subway Turning 100

Subways Transformed New York City

Oct 24, 2004 10:58 am US/Eastern
NEW YORK (AP) It's a busy weekday afternoon on the D train. Hispanic teenagers board in the Bronx, joking in Spanish. The approach to midtown Manhattan sends office workers pouring in. The scene changes again, as the train rumbles southeast into Brooklyn: African Americans, Asians and then Russian immigrants stream in.

The D train, like its alphabetic and numeric counterparts across the city, is a cross-section of humanity -- an unwitting, usually unnoticed celebration of a diverse city.

"You're going through four boroughs and God knows how many neighborhoods for just $2," says subway historian Stan Fischler. "How could you possibly find a better way to bring cultures together than the subway?"

Look around New York: The skyscrapers point toward the clouds, and the streets teem with pedestrians and cars. Below the surface is the Big Apple's nervous system: the subway, 722 miles of rumbling, grumbling metal.

And now -- as of Oct. 27 -- it's an entire century old.

From the first subway trip in 1904, when a single fare cost a nickel, the trains have forced New Yorkers hip to hip and stitched together their neighborhoods, essentially creating the city north of midtown and linking it with far-flung areas of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens.

Today, New York's subway has more miles of track than any underground transit system in the world and whisks 4.5 million passengers daily throughout the city.

"For New Yorkers," said Jonathan Marfey, 39, exiting an F train at Roosevelt Island, "it's part of life."

The system has been a central part of New York's identity for 100 years.

Think of subway scenes in movies -- the chase under elevated tracks in "The French Connection," mayhem in "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3," Woody Allen's affectionate views of the trains. Or how about the fight scenes in "The Warriors" or a saddened John Travolta riding the trains in "Saturday Night Fever."

Think Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train." Think "subway series."

Dozens of exhibits, events and testimonials celebrate the subway centennial. An exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York shows off subway photography. Other events upcoming include the crowning of "Ms. Subways" on Oct. 25 and a "Grand Finale Jam" concert at Grand Central Terminal on Oct. 27.

Even vintage trains will be rolled out for rides recalling earlier days of a system that, at its best, has been an example of municipal efficiency -- carrying 1.4 billion riders a year -- and, at its worst, has been a graffiti-strewn symbol of urban decay.

The inaugural trip carried then-Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. 9.1 miles from City Hall to 145th Street. "City Hall to Harlem in 15 minutes!" amazed city fathers exclaimed.

That 1904 milestone came after workers spent four years digging tunnels 55 feet wide and 15 feet high, while pumps drew out rainwater. The system has always been an engineering marvel. Subway lines were carved through bedrock, granite and quicksand. An innovation known as "cut and cover" allowed streets to be excavated, tunnels constructed and streets then restored.

The first few decades of the 1900s saw the growth of several private transit companies -- with names like the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company (BMT). The trains allowed immigrants crowded on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to create their own neighborhoods in once faraway villages.

"One of the important things the subway did was to disperse the population and accelerate growth in the outer boroughs," said Charles Sachs, senior curator of the New York Transit Museum.

Changes in population statistics between 1910 and 1940 tell the story. The Lower East Side in Manhattan dropped 63 percent. Coney Island, in the nether reaches of Brooklyn, saw a 921 percent gain. Jackson Heights, in Queens, went up 507 percent, and the eastern Bronx jumped 566 percent.

Even though the subways were carrying 8 million riders a day by 1946, economic woes had already bankrupted the IRT and BMT, forcing the city to take them over. By 1953, the fare went up to 15 cents a ride.

Managing and paying for the ever-growing system -- which costs nearly $5 billion a year including buses -- has been a consistent challenge. And the subway's low point also marked a low point for the city's image.

In 1966, a 12-day transit strike crippled New York. Decline continued through the 1970s and into the '80s, when the system became known for crime and graffiti-covered trains. At times, as much as a third of the subway fleet was out of service.

"Once graffiti covered the system and it seemed the city was going the way of 'A Clockwork Orange,"' said Gene Russianoff, attorney for the commuter advocacy group Straphangers Campaign, referring to Stanley Kubrick's 1971 ultra-violent film. "But it's symbolic that when the graffiti moved off the trains, we moved into the greatest peacetime economy in the nation's history."

Beginning in 1982, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that took over the subway system in 1968, began a major rebuilding drive. Trains were eventually cleaned, stations were rehabilitated and faulty tracks were torn up and re-laid. To date, more than $39 billion has been spent on the system's rehabilitation.

A new round of upgrading is under way -- "going from a lumbering, lethargic subway system to a real streamlined system," according to NYC Transit President Lawrence G. Reuter. A new train control system, similar to ones in London and Paris, is being tested on one Manhattan-to-Brooklyn line; and in the system's largest undertaking, a new, $16 billion line will be dug, following Second Avenue in Manhattan as a way of relieving congestion. Completion is scheduled for 2011.

The improvements to tracks and trains have helped the system maintain its relatively good safety record. There have been occasional derailments -- one during a strike in 1918 killed 97 and injured 200, and another, in 1991, blamed on a drunken motorman who would be convicted of manslaughter, killed five. In 2003, there were 2.65 injuries per 1 million customers, according to the MTA's annual report. During the same 12 months, subway cars traveled more than 347 million miles.

For some, the subway has a reputation for a different kind of danger -- characterized by tabloid headlines about commuters pushed in front of trains by deranged vagrants, and other types of crime. Today the subways average about nine major felonies a day, the lowest in decades, according to police statistics.

Still, if some fear the underground world, others revel in it.

There are the subway drivers, of course. "Nobody gets to see how hard we work," said operator Andrew Lockhart, 55, waving at afternoon passengers, some of whom he has gotten to know by sight.

There are people who make a more informal living in the tunnels, people like Edrits Diaz-Colon, 52, who is blind, lives in city shelters and panhandles in subway stations, collecting $60 on an average day.

"A guy once gave me $250," he said.

There are musicians -- one-man bands, blues harmonica players and, if the commuters rushing past get lucky, performers like cellist Cynthia Mulat, 22, who was playing Mozart on a recent day on the Rockefeller Center station platform with her sister, Angie Kifu, 24, and their cousin, Shirley Mawejje, 20, both of them violinists. Former New York residents now living in Georgia, they return from time to time to play in the subways as they used to do.

"People really enjoy us," Mulat said, "and it keeps us going to see people going about their day."

Every day millions swipe their MetroCard -- successor to the old subway token -- and pour through the turnstiles, rushing uptown or down.

It's "hard to imagine not being able to go underground and get where you're going very quickly," said Thomas Mellins, one of the curators of the Museum of the City of New York exhibit.

In fact, he said, "It really is hard to imagine New York without its subway system."

(© 2004 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )

[GaryMrMets]

http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/nyct/cen/history.htm

History of the New York City Subway System
By 1900, New York City was the second-largest city in the world, but most of its 3,437,202 people were squeezed into Manhattan (the Lower East Side was one of the most densely populated areas in history). Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens were largely undeveloped. Getting around was near impossible; it took hours to get from Wall Street to Harlem, and while moving out of Manhattan was desirable, it was impractical for most.

New York City developed, and flourished, because public transportation made it possible to live in one area, work in another, and get anywhere easily. As subway lines were planned and opened, whole neighborhoods of houses and shops sprang up around stations. New York's population quickly spread beyond Manhattan: in the 1890s Harlem was a little town in the suburbs; by 1914, 75 percent of New York's African-Americans lived there. In 1923, a million people lived in the formerly bucolic Bronx - it was as big as the sixth largest city in the America.

Groundbreaking

In March 1900, ground was broken in Manhattan for an electric-powered subway. Twelve thousand men worked to build the subway for the privately owned Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) using the cut-and-cover method: rather than drilling and tunneling deep beneath the city, a trench was cut to accommodate a typically 55-foot wide and 15-foot high tunnel, the rails were laid and stations built, the finished work was enclosed in steel beams, and a shallow layer of fill and paving was placed over the trench.

Inauguration

When the subway opened on October 27, 1904, 150,000 people paid a nickel each to ride. New Yorkers embraced the IRT's clean (electric power produced no smoke and cinders), quick ride. It was the fastest city transportation system in the world; its four-track design enabled both express and local trains to run in each direction, and "City Hall to Harlem in 15 minutes!" was the slogan.

Soon the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company began building a new subway between Brooklyn and Manhattan, tunneling routes south into Brooklyn and east into Queens. The BMT opened in 1915, and construction work began on a third subway in 1925. In 1932 New York City's Board of Transportation completed the Eighth Avenue Line, creating the Independent -- independent from private interests

-- City Owned Rapid Transit Railroad, or IND. The Sixth Avenue line, the last major piece of the IND system, opened in 1940. The city now had three separate, separately owned and operated subways -- forming the largest subway system in the world.

New York City's subways and "els" provided more than 8 million rides a day in the 1940s, and on Monday, December 23, 1946, the number reached 8,872,244 -- a standing record.

Decline

The Depression brought bankruptcy to the private subway companies. By 1940 New York City had taken over the IRT and BMT and become owner-operator of all the subway and elevated lines. But it too was unable to maintain the system. For the 42 years since the first subway opened in 1904 the fare had remained a nickel, and the nickel fare was inadequate for maintaining trains, stations, equipment, and aging infrastructure. Now ridership was declining: after World War II, enormous sums of money were poured into highways rather than mass transit. Customers moved to the suburbs, service began to falter, and more customers left.

Modest fare increases did not keep the subways from going into a three-and-a-half decade decline from the late 40s to the early 80s. In 1948 the fare went to a dime; in 1953 to 15 cents, and tokens were introduced. In that year the New York State Legislature also created the New York City Transit Authority to manage and operate the subway system. Through the 50s and 60s, the subways continued to deteriorate, and, with no significant sources of new funding, NYCTA could not halt the downward trend. In 1968 the New York State Legislature created the current Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the Transit Authority joined the MTA family. But nevertheless the decline continued in the 70s and 80s.

Turnaround and Advances

By the early 80s a third of the fleet was typically out of service during the morning rush hours, cars broke down or caught fire, trains derailed on hazardous track, and graffiti covered virtually every car. In 1982 the MTA began to rehabilitate the subways through a series of five-year Capital Programs, the largest public transportation rebuilding effort in national history. Over $39 billion has been invested since the program began.

Innovations

By 1990 New York City subway system was returned to a state of good repair and began moving forward with improvements. On May 14, 1997, the entire New York City Transit bus and subway system began to accept MetroCard. On July 4, the technology enabled free bus-to-subway, subway-to-bus, and bus-to-bus transfers. In 1999 a full range of fare and travel options including volume discounts and unlimited-ride one-day, 7-day, and 30-day passes was introduced, and New York City's subways and buses stopped accepting tokens at the end of 2003.

Arts for Transit

As the MTA rehabilitated subway stations to make them safer and more convenient, it began for the first time to focus on accommodating the needs of the disabled, making the subways more accessible to people with disabilities by introducing elevators, ramps, signage, and other features in conformity with the Americans with Disabilities Act. At the same time the MTA also seeks to create a rich and aesthetically pleasing environment in subway.

The first IRT stations were artistically designed; they featured elegant kiosks for entrances, elegant mosaic borders, and specially designed plaques linked to the name or neighborhood of the station. Astor Place, for example, has a beaver motif in reference to John Jacob Astor’s involvement in the fur business; Fulton Street uses images of Robert Fulton's steamboat; Grand Central Terminal uses images of a train engine. Today, the MTA Arts for Transit program continues this tradition, encouraging the use of public transit by commissioning and installing permanent works of art by both well-established and emerging artists that create visually unique links to the architectural history and design of stations and the neighborhoods they serve. To date 125 works have been installed and 81 are underway or planned.

Conclusion

Over one hundred stations have been renovated and hundreds more renovations are planned; reliability, safety, and personal security have been improved; over a thousand new high-tech cars have been purchased, and more are on order, at a cost of $2.4 billion; automated fare collection has enabled free transfers and discounts - all these advances proclaim that New York's subways have once again become a prime driver of its economic life and cultural and ethnic vibrancy. For business as for leisure, for New Yorkers as for tourists, the subways move New York.


"Cut and Cover" subway tunnel construction
Park Row Manhattan, November 13, 1902; Transit Museum archive.


Vaulting, Tiles, and Ticket Booth, CityHall IRT Station, Manhattan, 1904; Transit Museum archive.


Workmen in a subway tunnel,
October 19, 1917; Transit Museum archives.


Detail, “Stream,” installed at the 23rd St/Ely Av station Queens, 2001, commissioned
by MTA Arts for Transit; Elizabeth Murray, artist; photograph by Andrew Garn.


The scene is under Broadway and West 58th Street. Workers pause while a company photograph records their progress in building New York's first subway.


A subway car from the original Interborough order. Unlike subsequent orders made of steel, this group was made of wood and steel. These composite cars were transferred to elevated railway service when City officials expressed concern about the possibility of fire in the subway.


This is what the interior of the first Interborough subway car looked like in 1904. Later, when the center door was added to speed the flow of passengers, the cross-seats were removed.

[GaryMrMets]

Former composite subway car shown on Third Avenue El. Note addition of center door.


Car #100, at the AFC plant in Berwick, Pa., is the first of many hundreds of subway cars to be built for Independent Subway System in 1931.


In 1931 the new IND subway cars are delivered by ferry and are off-loaded at the 207th St. Yard in Manhattan.


For the 1939/40 World's Fair, a spur track was built off the Queens Boulevard line to the World's Fair. Double fair of 10 cents was charged for this special service.


A test run to the newly constructed Euclid Avenue station, in Brooklyn on the A line, November 23, 1948. In less than a decade the line will be extended to Lefferts Blvd. and the Rockaways in Queens.


In 1914 the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation purchased its first all steel subway cars, B types. In the photo above the train on the express track, headed toward Coney Island. The train is on the Brighton Beach local track is a D type. (Photo by permission of Explorer Press)


Built between 1927 and 1928, the BMT D type was an articulated 3-car train. The middle car shared its trucks with the first and last cars.


This is one of the many Subway Sun cards that entertained and informed train riders from the 1940's through the 1960's.

[GaryMrMets]

A Fifth Avenue Coach double-decker bus is being used to advertise the need for American volunteers during WWI.


1948 Twin Coach purchased by the NYC Board of Transportation. The divided front windows were meant to increase visibility and reduce sun glare.


In 1948, trolley buses were purchased for Brooklyn and Queens. Trolley buses were first used in NYC on Staten Island in 1921 to replace the services of a defunct trolley company, Staten Island Midland Railway.


In the late 1950s, Fifth Avenue Coach purchased the first air-conditioned buses to be used for local service in NYC. The bus pictured above is part of New York Transit Museum's historic collection.


From the early 1870s until 1903, Manhattan's elevated trains were powered by small steam locomotives.


On November 21, 1900, multiple-unit, electric-powered trains were tested on the 34th Street Shuttle. Car 703 headed the test train. By April, 1903 all Manhattan elevated lines were electrified.


In this May 1955 photograph we see Money Collection Car G on the Third Avenue El at East. 45th Street. Money Car G was originally used as a coach in the steam powered days. When this photo was taken by Arthur Lonto, the Third Avenue El had only a few days left. (Photo used with permission of A. Lonto.)


The late 1950s scene is at the junction of Myrtle and Wyckoff Avenues at the Queens-Brooklyn border. The Myrtle Avenue El was the last rapid transit line in North America to use open gate cars.

[Rockin Robin]

Happy birthdya!!!

[Sheafaithful]

I love the old school 7 train. These new sterile white subways with the robotic voice are scary!

I am proud to say my commute is subway-less: two buses and I'm at work!