From a Compact City into a Metropolis

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 10-26
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Construction Costs ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Population Spread ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter discusses how the creation of an urban transportation system transformed New York City. After private railroad companies built tracks for elevated railroads (Els) above the city's streets in the 1870s, the city's population spread out and grew rapidly from Lower Manhattan. To continue growing, however, the city had to build electric-powered rail lines, underground, that would travel faster and further and would accommodate even more people than the Els. Thus, the City of New York paid the construction costs for its first subway and in 1900 entered into a long-term lease with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) to build and operate it. In 1913, the City of New York entered into contracts with two companies—the IRT and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT)—to build more lines in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. However, in the early twentieth century, New York's politicians took a shortsighted approach to the transit system. Instead of raising fares, they raised false expectations that New Yorkers could have high-quality subway service with low fares. The repercussions would last for generations. The chapter then looks at the establishment of the Office of Transit Construction Commissioner, the construction of a city-owned and city-operated “Independent” (IND) subway system, and the planning for a Second Avenue subway.

Last Subway

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
East Side ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Construction Period ◽  
Transit Services ◽  
Subway System ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This book is the fascinating and dramatic story behind New York City's struggle to build a new subway line under Second Avenue and improve transit services all across the city. The book reveals why the city's subway system, once the best in the world, is now too often unreliable, overcrowded, and uncomfortable. It explains how a series of uninformed and self-serving elected officials have fostered false expectations about the city's ability to adequately maintain and significantly expand its transit system. Since the 1920s, New Yorkers have been promised a Second Avenue subway. When the first of four planned phases opened on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 2017, subway service improved for tens of thousands of people. Riders have been delighted with the clean, quiet, and spacious new stations. Yet these types of accomplishments will not be repeated unless New Yorkers learn from their century-long struggle. The book offers valuable lessons in how governments can overcome political gridlock and enormous obstacles to build grand projects. However, it is also a cautionary tale for cities. It reveals how false promises, redirected funds, and political ambitions have derailed subway improvements. Given the ridiculously high cost of building new subways in New York and their lengthy construction period, the Second Avenue subway (if it is ever completed) will be the last subway built in New York for generations to come.

International Opera in Nineteenth-century New York

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-269
Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War I ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
World War ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
The City

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”

The Mysterious Victory of the Newsboys: The Grand Duke Theatre's 1874 Challenge to the Theatre Licensing Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-80
Author(s):  
Michelle Granshaw
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Juvenile Delinquents ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Financial Power ◽  
House Of Refuge ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers ◽  
Legal Battle

In 1874, a group of newsboys took on some of the wealthiest, most respected, and most powerful New Yorkers and emerged victorious. The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, a philanthropic organization that worked to guard public morals and championed Christian values, faced two challenges that year over the city's theatre licensing fee. Its prominent members and their financial power made the organization a formidable force in local city matters. As a result of the 1872 Act to Regulate Places of Public Amusement in the City of New York, theatre managers were required to pay $500 to the city for an operating license. The city gave the fees to the society, which it used to operate the city's House of Refuge. The society believed that theatres corrupted the city's youth and that, therefore, the theatres should help fund youth reform efforts. In its legal proceedings against theatres without licenses, the society typically targeted cheap entertainment establishments in poor neighborhoods. These playhouses “werenotparticularly powerful and presumably would not put up too strenuous a legal battle.”

Planning from the Bottom Up

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 124-156
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
System Capacity ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
System Increase ◽  
Subway System ◽  
Rail Service

This chapter recounts how New York City Transit Authority rail service planners Peter Cafiero, Chuck Kirchner, Glenn Lunden, and Jon Melnick resurrected the Second Avenue subway in 1988. Even though the Transit Authority was in the early stages of its 1987–91 capital program, the planners' bosses wanted to start getting ready for the next program, which would run from 1992 to 1996. The first step would be to create a document that assessed the authority's long-term needs and identified projects that would rehabilitate the subway system, increase ridership, improve productivity, and expand system capacity. One proposal the planners wrote to address the Lexington Avenue's problems was an idea that the MTA planner Bob Olmsted had first championed in 1975—a Second Avenue subway north of 63rd Street. As the Second Avenue subway proposal moved up the Transit Authority hierarchy, the authority's president, David Gunn, agreed that the time was right to begin thinking about expanding the subway system. Before he could devote significant resources to advancing the Second Avenue subway, however, it would have to compete with other potential megaprojects under discussion at the MTA's agencies.

Case Studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-68
Author(s):  
Rebecca Yamin ◽  
Donna J. Seifert
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
York City ◽  
High Class ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on two case studies, reviewing in detail the findings of large urban projects that encountered brothel sites. The New York City project addresses the history and archaeology of a brothel in the Five Points neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The discussion contrasts the reputation of the residents with the evidence revealed by the artifact assemblages. The discussion of Washington, D.C. parlor houses addresses the remarkable assemblage of high-class furnishings and possessions and expensive foods enjoyed in the houses in the heart of the city—houses that served the men of government and business in the nation’s capital.

An Opportunity for E-Democracy in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan

2011 ◽  
pp. 751-758
Author(s):  
Claudia G. Green ◽  
Suzanne K. Murrmann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Internet Technology ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Citizen Satisfaction ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Online Format ◽  
Use Of Internet ◽  
The City

Following the events of September 11, 2001 (9-11), the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York established a forum for the purposes of gathering citizen opinions on the nature of the rebuilding of New York City’s Lower Manhattan area. Citizens gave their opinions on the development of space for a memorial, performing arts spaces, museums, restaurants, hotels, residences and businesses. This effort was named “Listening to the City.” Civic Alliance organized two types of citizen opinion-gathering strategies: face-to-face focus groups and online dialog focus groups (www.listeningtothecity.org). The purpose of this article is to assess citizen satisfaction with veness of the online format of citizen involvement in making decisions regarding the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan following the attacks of 9-11. The results contribute to our understanding of the use of Internet technology in gathering citizen opinions in urban development and planning.

An Opportunity for E-Democracy in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan

2011 ◽  
pp. 1306-1310 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. G. Green ◽  
S. K. Murrmann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Internet Technology ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Citizen Satisfaction ◽  
Lower Manhattan ◽  
Online Format ◽  
Use Of Internet ◽  
The City

Following the events of September 11, 2001 (9-11), the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York established a forum for the purposes of gathering citizen opinions on the nature of the rebuilding of New York City’s Lower Manhattan area. Citizens gave their opinions on the development of space for a memorial, performing arts spaces, museums, restaurants, hotels, residences and businesses. This effort was named “Listening to the City.” Civic Alliance organized two types of citizen opinion-gathering strategies: face-to-face focus groups and online dialog focus groups (www.listeningtothecity.org). The purpose of this article is to assess citizen satisfaction with veness of the online format of citizen involvement in making decisions regarding the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan following the attacks of 9-11. The results contribute to our understanding of the use of Internet technology in gathering citizen opinions in urban development and planning.

3B Rapid Transit: Yangzhou’s Ecology-Based Urban Development Research

2011 ◽  
Vol 280 ◽  
pp. 36-39
Author(s):  
Yu Jing Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Transport ◽  
Pattern Language ◽  
Bus Rapid Transit ◽  
Development Research ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Main Mode ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Development And Utilization ◽  
Mode Of Transport ◽  
The City

The paper considers the development and utilization of the Yangzhou’s Canal is not enough, the city's achievements in building a far cry from the once glorious, now can not meet the future transport planning has been far from development. This paper then made twenty creative pattern language to develop the city's green transport, including the characteristics of canal traffic and the bike and bus rapid transit system as the city's main mode of transport, to create a set of Boats, Buses, Bikes (3B Rapid Transit) in one of the three healthy, environmentally friendly urban transport network, reshaping the image of the city, another city of glory.

scholarly journals The bus rapid transit system: A service quality dimension of commuter uptake in Cape Town, South Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Prince D. Ugo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Service Quality ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Stated Preference ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Bus Rapid Transit ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
The City

This study evaluated commuter uptake of the bus rapid transit (BRT) system in Cape Town,South Africa. As a stated preference survey was not carried out prior to the launch of the new BRT system in the City of Cape Town, it became difficult to assess commuters’ preferences,which would have provided City policymakers and planners with an understanding of customer satisfaction of the proposed bus service. The commuting trend of the BRT system in the City indicates that tickets sales and utilisation by commuters is gradually picking up, but one would have expected high commuter engagement in terms of the modernity profile of the BRT system. This study investigated commuters’ (n = 260) satisfaction levels with 30 service quality variables on a self-rated questionnaire, using quantitative research methodology.The study result showed that passengers were not satisfied with the transport fare and the availability or accessibility of ticket sales outlets. In the context of this study, this result implies that the ‘responsiveness and affordability’ variable of the service quality dimensions should be an area of interest and review to City of Cape Town policymakers and planners. Service quality trends in public transport were also highlighted.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document