Why Did America Destroy Its Great Cities? (Commentary)

[mhays]

That presumably doesn't count long-distance rail. Seattle built an intercity rail tunnel in 1910 or so through Downtown. It's currently used for Amtrak, commuter rail, and freight.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Newark and Rochester.

thanks. i was racking my brain trying to come up with the other two.

i never knew that rochester was once home to a subway line. and since it's been closed for over 50 years, i probably never would have known about it were it not for this forum.

[BevoLJ]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Newark and Rochester.

Right on thanks! I didn't know Rochester ever had a line.

(not directed at you MR): Also on the talk about trains going out to villages outside of the cities in the late 19th and early 20th century, that was just as common in Europe if no more-so than it was in the US. Everywhere in Europe was and still is like that. I really don't see how you can lay the blame for suburbanization on that.

[iheartthed]

Isn't the difference between America's pre-war streetcar suburbs and the post-war interstate suburbs that the streetcar burbs were generally annexed into the city?

Pre-war American burbs seem similar to what happened/happens in Europe, where communities are regularly absorbed into the central city as they become developed. In the American post-war era, for whatever reason, suburbs stopped being absorbed into the central city after they were developed.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Isn't the difference between America's pre-war streetcar suburbs and the post-war interstate suburbs that the streetcar burbs were generally annexed into the city?

chicago has craploads of pre-war streetcar/commuter rail burbs that were never annexed by the city. i grew in one of them: Wilmette.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

chicago has craploads of prewar streetcar and commuter rail burbs that were never annexed by the city. i grew in one of them: Wilmette.

Well, I'm speaking in general, but I'm looking at a map of Chicago's annexation history now. Chicago's boundaries changed tremendously in the 65 years before 1950, but the boundaries haven't changed at all since 1950. Yet, Chicagoland's outer areas have continued to grow and expand during the post 1950 period -- largely unchecked to my knowledge (?) -- but remain autonomous with few shared services. Contrast that with London, for instance, which created the effect of an annexation with the creation of Greater London in the 1960s.

[Steely Dan]

^ my point wasn't that chicago didn't annex huge swaths of suburban land prior to 1950 (it certainly did), it was merely to counter your contention that, in american cities, pre-war suburbs were by and large annexed by central cities. that's just not true in chicago's case. many pre-war burbs were annexed into the city, but many others weren't. it's very much a mixed bag, mainly because chicago's suburban areas didn't develop in nice tidy ever-expanding concentric circles of growth rings, rather, suburban chicago developed radially outward from downtown along the major commuter rail line corridors. pre-war burbs close in got swallowed up by the city, pre-war burbs further out remained independent. the post-war automobile-fueled explosion of suburban chicagoland would then later fill in the gaps of empty land between the radial arms of the pre-war railroad-developed burbs.

exploring suburban chicagoland via Metra commuter rail is a radically different experience than exploring it via the post-war expressway/tollway network.

[Crawford]

Newark and Rochester didn't really have subway systems.

They had light rail trolley systems, that happened to have underground portions.

Boston, too, didn't have a subway system until later. The original portions of the T were all trolleys that happened to have a downtown tunnel.

So if you're going to count Newark, Rochester and Boston you might as well include every city that had a trolley network. The only difference is that these three cities had extensive tunnels.

Newark's system (which includes the original Newark City Subway) has been altered and expanded, but remains to this day mostly underground light rail. They have heavy rail, but it's a separate system (PATH and NJ Transit rail).

Boston added heavy rail later on, with the Red and Orange lines.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ my point wasn't that chicago didn't annex huge swaths of land prior to 1950 (it certainly did), it was merely to counter your contention that, in american cities, pre-war suburbs were by and large annexed by central cities. that's just not true in chicago's case. many pre-war burbs were annexed into the city, but many others weren't. it's very much a mixed bag.

Oh okay. I didn't mean to imply that they were all absorbed. I know of some streetcar suburbs from where I grew up that weren't annexed either. But in the earlier stages of the Industrial Revolution, as American cities started to explode in population, the trend was similar to what was happening in Europe.

I'd like to wrap that point back around to my earlier point in this thread, that the administrative structure in America may have had a large role (I'm just an armchair urban historian) in how America's cities were allowed to deteriorate. European cities have more administrative "prominence" than America's. All American cities, except Washington, are abstracted from the federal level through a state government, and most are abstracted again through a county government as well. I'm just speculating, but this probably works out to give smaller towns and villages throughout the U.S. more relative political power than their small town counterparts in Europe would enjoy.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Newark and Rochester didn't really have subway systems.

They had light rail trolley systems, that happened to have underground portions.

Boston, too, didn't have a subway system until later. The original portions of the T were all trolleys that happened to have a downtown tunnel.

So if you're going to count Newark, Rochester and Boston you might as well include every city that had a trolley network. The only difference is that these three cities had extensive tunnels.

Newark's system (which includes the original Newark City Subway) has been altered and expanded, but remains to this day mostly underground light rail. They have heavy rail, but it's a separate system (PATH and NJ Transit rail).

Boston added heavy rail later on, with the Red and Orange lines.

Well, if you're going to add trolley subways, you might as well add Providence, Los Angeles, San Francisco(?), and possibly a few other cities as well.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by hammersklavier

Well, if you're going to add trolley subways, you might as well add Providence, Los Angeles, San Francisco(?), and possibly a few other cities as well.

In the case of San Francisco and Providence, the tunnels were built to avoid steep hills, not really to turn the streetcar systems into subways. Both tunnels return to grade as soon as it becomes practical to do so. Neither tunnel has stations in it.

LA is kind of a special case, but it did have an underground terminal station, so I guess that counts.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Boston, too, didn't have a subway system until later. The original portions of the T were all trolleys that happened to have a downtown tunnel.

Boston added heavy rail later on, with the Red and Orange lines.

Absolutely not true. The Red Line (originally called the Cambridge Subway) opened in 1912 and was a fully grade-separated subway akin to the one in New York. Boston also had fully grade-separated elevated lines even earlier, although all elevated trackage has since been shifted underground (with the exception of the short stretch of track around Charles/MGH).

Also, if you're gonna nitpick about Boston's Green Line, you should probably also throw out Chicago, where major stretches of the Douglas (Pink), Ravenswood (Brown) and Lake Street (Green) Lines were built at-grade with level crossings. The Green Line was elevated in the 1960s, but the other two remain.

Chicago's rolling stock is also streetcar-length and weight, because of the tight junctions and turns required on the elevated structures. Of course, the IRT has the same car length, for the same reason.

It's one big continuum, really... there's as much difference between the Chicago L and a modern metro like DC's, as there is between the Chicago L and a streetcar system.

[JivecitySTL]

Holy shit, when I think of what St. Louis was and should be again, I get goosebumps.

[BevoLJ]

Well I know London's Tube is the oldest (and BEST!) underground in the world, so ....

Kidding, although I do think it is the oldest. Or someone once told me that. But I thought Boston's was pretty old too? At least older than 1912.

Austin was just a small town of 20,000 back then so not much need of one. But would be cool if we got something now. It is pretty sad that we just have that one stupid line they made that no one uses.

[jcchii]

this feels very 1995

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Boston, too, didn't have a subway system until later. The original portions of the T were all trolleys that happened to have a downtown tunnel....Boston added heavy rail later on...[/

How much "later on" is 1901?

That is the year Boston first started running heavy rail on three elevated lines--and 1901 is also the year Boston first ran one of those heavy rail lines through downtown in the newly quad-tracked Tremont Street Tunnel. The T switched heavy rail to the new Washington Street Tunnel in 1908, leaving the original tunnel exclusively for light rail once again. The first heavy rail subway in New York opened in 1904, so this is all pretty contemporary stuff.

[fflint]

Here's a map of downtown Boston's heavy-rail "loop," circa 1901. The blue and dotted blue lines are tunnels:


Wikipedia

[Double L]

Here's an idea..........

People like living in the suburbs.

[Reverberation]

Originally Posted by Double L

Here's an idea..........

People like living in the suburbs.

No, thats such a lie. People hate the suburbs, the only reason that they were forced to live there was because evil republicans/conservatives/right wingers conspired with greedy developers to force them to own more land!

[mhays]

Yes many people like the suburbs. But it's inarguable that public policy and bank policy have played a big role in their expansion, and in cities' problems. The GI Bill isn't something we made up on SSP for example.

[pesto]

Completely agree that the government should stay out of housing and dictating to people where they should live. And, for sure, bank policy should be a response to real risk and demand, not to governement policy, subsidies or guarantees.