{"id":15619,"date":"2022-06-08T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.renthop.com\/content-manager\/?p=15619"},"modified":"2022-06-08T15:01:29","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T19:01:29","slug":"evolution-of-public-transit-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.renthop.com\/blog\/evolution-of-public-transit-nyc\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of Public Transit in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

We all know New Yorkers love to complain about the subway. However, our current transit system doesn\u2019t seem so bad when you consider that commuters in centuries past had to deal with such inconveniences as literal tons<\/a> of horse dung piled on street corners and risking life and limb dodging cable cars on Union Square\u2019s charmingly-named Dead Man\u2019s Curve<\/a>. In order to understand the extraordinary degree to which New York City\u2019s<\/a> public transit evolved to be safer and more efficient, it\u2019s necessary to look back several centuries at how commuters used to get around.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Horsepower Era<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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By Store Web page states: “Photo by B. J. FORD” – eBay store Web page<\/a>, Public Domain<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Many of what would become New York\u2019s major thoroughfares, including Broadway and Lafayette Street, were originally walking paths used by the Lenape, Manhattan\u2019s indigenous people<\/a>, as trade routes. In the first several decades after Dutch colonizers established \u201cNew Amsterdam\u201d on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, the city was small enough to be navigable by foot. However, as New York became \u201cNew York\u201d and ballooned into the largest city on the continent<\/a>, it became more common for workers in the city to live upwards of a mile from their place of employment.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The city\u2019s earliest commuters got around primarily on horse and buggy, but the first true form of public transit in New York was the horse-drawn omnibus<\/a>, a large stagecoach that could fit up to a dozen passengers. Beginning in 1827, when the first public transit route was established, omnibuses started traversing a set course around the city each day. For the first time, commuters had a reliable and affordable means of catching a ride to work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

However, the sheer number of horses necessary to keep Manhattan moving\u2014more than 150,000 by the late 19th century\u2014led to problems of its own. A horse generates about twenty-two pounds of manure per day, resulting in a total of 100,000 tons of feces<\/a> dumped on the city streets over the course of a year. Additionally, city living was hard on horses, and it was not uncommon for their bodies to be left in the street to rot<\/a> when they collapsed on the job.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Streetcars and Cable Cars<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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By Credited to The Brown Brothers – w:The New York Times photo archive, via its online store here., Public Domain<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The public health crisis caused by Manhattan\u2019s swelling equine population created a pressing demand for a new form of transportation. The first step came in 1832 with the introduction of the horsecar<\/a>, a streamlined version of the omnibus that ran on metal tracks. The tracks rested directly into the ground rather than over the bumping paving stones of the streets themselves. These horse-drawn streetcars offered a smoother, faster ride than the omnibus and also required less horsepower.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The debut of New York\u2019s steam-powered cable car in 1883<\/a> finally offered commuters a horseless transportation option. To get around, these vehicles made use of a continuously-moving steam-propelled cable system<\/a> buried under the city streets: if conductors wished to stop, they simply had to disengage from the cable and wait for their car to come to a halt. While it was difficult to regulate their speed\u2014especially when it came to stopping on a dime\u2014cable cars were even faster and more efficient than horsecars.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Another game changer was the implementation of the first electric streetcars in the 1890s, which began with Brooklyn\u2019s Coney Island Avenue Line<\/a> and quickly spread outward to consume the city. In fact, Brooklyn\u2019s baseball team was originally named the \u201cTrolley Dodgers\u201d<\/a> as an homage to the complex tangle of streetcar tracks their fans had to cross to gain access to the stadium. Edged out by electric streetcars and the city\u2019s early train systems, both cable cars and horsecars had ceased operation<\/a> in the city by 1917.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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