New York City is a glorious, sprawling metropolis, and it blazed new trails in city planning and mass transit. Inventive solutions allowed NYC to grow and thrive, creating a flow of traffic that pumped through the city like lifeblood. Today, the old bones and paths of early omnibuses, trolleys, and trains still mark the streets and skies of the five boroughs. They have a long and storied history as essential elements in one of the greatest cities on Earth. Continue reading from Top View NYC
The New York City subway system is a marvel to take in, flaws and all, filled with a rich and vibrant history. One of its most intriguing components of its past is the evolution of its subway cars.
To understand why and how subway cars have changed over time, it helps to know the basic history of how the city’s unified transit system came to be. Before there was the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), there were three subway lines that ran independent of each other: Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (BMT), and Independent Rapid Transit Railroad (IND), all of which will make appearances in this abridged history of subway cars. Those three systems were combined in 1953 into one city-run conglomerate: the New York City Transit Authority, which was later absorbed by the state into the newly-created MTA in 1968. By that point, the cars used to transport people around the city had evolved from steam-powered above-ground trains to hulking (and soon-to-be graffiti-covered) subway cars. And more innovation was yet to come—read on to see how the evolution happened. Continue reading from NY Curbed
The Historic Civil Engineering Landmark Program recognizes historically significant national and international engineering projects, structures, and sites. To be nominated, a project must be of historical civil engineering significance, have a special uniqueness (e.g., a first project constructed) or utilized a unique or significant construction or engineering technique, and contributed to the development of the nation or at least a very large region. Projects nominated as landmarks should also be at least 50 years old. Thirteen projects in the New York region have been designated as National Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks and one project has been designated as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. Continue reading from American Society of Civil Engineers
