Approximately two lifetimes ago, I lived in Rochester, NY while completing my MBA. This period immediately preceded two amazing years I spent in the former Soviet Union, during which I fell in love with the Moscow subway and the rich public transportation networks of Europe. That experience was clearly an awakening for me, leading directly to a standing interest in transport that led to this blog.But before all that, there was Rochester, a gritty Rust Belt town fallen on hard times. Funny how things come full circle: apparently the "Young Lion of the West", aka the "Flour City", aka the "Flower City" once had its very own subway (click here for a great writeup of the subway courtesy of the blog "StrangeMaps"). I don't recall ever hearing about it while living there, but it turns out that for a brief 29 years the city had a single subway line that ran through downtown in a former Erie Canal channel.
Naturally, there are people who look back fondly on those days, including Michael Governale and Otto M. Vondrak, who devote the above-mentioned blog to the subway. Included in their blog is this fantasy map showing what the system might look like today if Rochester's future had turned out as rosy as city planners had hoped in those heady days gone by. The Blue Line was the only one (of 4 displayed) on this map which was actually constructed. The others were all proposed at one time or another.
You can buy the Rochester Subway poster here.
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Reading about Rochester's forgotten subway got me thinking about transportation in other cities where I have lived. Below are a few notes on a couple of those cities, but look for more extensive future posts on transportation in Durham, Charlottesville, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Riga, and Boston in the weeks ahead. And thanks for reading.
Charlottesville, Virginia:
As it turns out, Charlottesville was recently considering a short streetcar line of 3 miles, running from downtown to the University of Virginia, with possible future extension north to the large Barracks Road shopping center. But the city's small population of 45,000 ultimately made the project too risky, given its $70 million price tag. Did the city ever have streetcars in the distant past? I intend to research this and write more in a future post - stay tuned!
Riga, Latvia:
Riga shares the same rich transport networks of larger former-Soviet cities such as Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, with the notable exception of a subway. Soviet authorities planned to build a subway in Riga in the 1980's, as they did for every city in the "Worker's Paradise"with more than 1 million residents. But vehement local opposition, driven in part by preservation concerns for the city's ancient core, forced the Soviets to abandon the plan. This event is now viewed as a "shot across the bow", a harbinger of the Latvian national revival that led ultimately to the small nation declaring its independence in 1990.
As a nation we need to figure out a way to bring communal modes of transportation like streetcars back into the public mindset. Especially in smaller cities like Rochester and Charlottesville. The old Robert Moses ideas of building more and more roads and highways has run its course. We've destroyed too many neighborhoods this way. Awesome post and great blog!
ReplyDeleteMike, thanks for your comment - you now have the distinction of being the first to comment on my blog!
ReplyDeleteWhile towns like Rochester (with declining population and economy) and Charlottesville (growing, but still quite small) may not be the best candidates for expensive transit projects at the moment, I do think there is a growing interest within larger cities in re-thinking transportation priorities. In DC, I hear evidence of this all the time - people are growing weary of soul-crushing commutes and traffic, and are growing more willing to seek and fund alternatives like buses/streetcars/trains. Overcoming 60+ years of auto-entric urban planning, however, will continue to be an uphill battle.
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