#el train

[postcardaday]

The El at Wall Street, Arnold Eagle, 1943.

[outofeverythingthisnamewasleft]

Third Ave El Train, Bronx & Manhattan, New York City ca 1930's

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Near Broadway in Jackson Heights on July 21, 1949, with the elevated Number 7 train in the background.

Photo: Robert Kradin for the AP

[damn-these-eyes]

Chicago

[nemfrog]

Brookfield Zoo--By the "L". Chicago. Federal Art Project, WPA, [between 1936 and 1938]

Library of Congress

[hyperrealcartography]

The Last Train to Jamaica: How NYC Almost Replaced Its Els

Image of Queensboro Plaza, twice as large as it is today, before unification. Undated. Image of Queensboro Plaza, twice as large as it is today, before unification. Undated. Image of Queensboro Plaza, twice as large as it is today, before unification. Undated. The New York City subway is famously made up of three formerly private railroads; three distinct networks that were planned to be…

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[spockvarietyhour]

New Utrecht Ave - Millers Restaurant in Boro Park, Brooklyn 1976

[vivian-the-barbarian]

Thinking about The Boring Company’s transport loops tick me off so much from an engineering standpoint. Just that it is basically just a road for electric cars (because gasoline cars would fill the tunnel with fumes)

Like gee. You want to reduce automobile traffic by building underground tunnels for electric vehicles? DO YOU KNOW HOW TO REDUCE AUTOMOBILE TRAFFIC WITH UNDERGROUND TUNNELS FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES?????

OH YEAH. A TRAIN. NOT ROAD VEHICLES. Electric trains been around for a hundred and thirty years and nobody at The Boring Company asked why cities use these rather than building extensive underground taxi routes. Or, more likely, somebody did ask why, and Elon Musk had them demoted. 

I think what ticks me off the most is that the vehicles they use unmodified Tesla Model 3′s. Because it makes it obvious that this is just about the tunnel. If you want to use road vehicles to travel directly place to place with no intersections, you can make an expressway with a turnaround at the end. 

The core idea is just bad. Everything it tries to accomplish has been done before, and better. Underground electric mass transit has been done before. Car-based instant transit has been done before. They made a suckier version of the subway and had the audacity to appropriate the name “Loop” from Chicago’s Public El Trains.