#110 New York City Subway, Part 2: By the Numbers (and Letters)

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2010

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The amazing New York City subway system travels hundreds of miles under the earth and elevated through the boroughs. In this episode, we let you in on how it went from one long tunnel in 1904 to the busiest subway on earth. This is our last episode in our series BOWERY BOYS ON THE GO, and we end it on the expansion of the New York City subway. Find out how some as innocuous sounding as the 'Dual Contracts' actually become one of the most important events in the city's history, creating new underground rounds into Brooklyn, the Bronx and (wondrously!) and finally into Queens. Then we'll talk about the city's IND line, which completes our modern track lines and gives the subway its modern sheen. After listening to this show, you won't look at the Herald Square subway station the same way again. ALSO: Bernard Goetz and the future history of the Second Avenue Subway! www.boweryboyspodcast.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowery Boys Episode 110, The New York Subway Part 2, 3, A-C-E, B-D-U
0:08.3	Hey, it's The Bowery Boys!
0:09.9	Hey!
0:10.9	The Bowery Boys is brought to you by EuroChipo.com.
0:14.8	EuroChipo editors personally visit and review the best budget hotels in Europe.
0:19.6	Now with hotels in New York City, on the web at EuroChipo.com.
0:24.2	Hello there, welcome back to The Bowery Boys, this is Greg Young, and this is Tom Myers.
0:28.7	And we are about to present to you the second part of the history of the New York City Subway.
0:33.8	This of course is the last part of our entire look at public transportation.
0:39.0	Now in the first episode, we talked about just about a few years of the formation of the very first line
0:46.2	that went from Lower Manhattan up to the Bronx.
0:49.0	In this podcast, we're going to cover almost 105 years, basically what happened to the Subway.
0:56.0	How it went from about a couple dozen miles of line to almost 229 miles of route.
1:03.9	We really did just leave passengers on the platforms, if you will, in 1904 with the opening of that first IRT line.
1:11.8	So we're quite excited to tell the rest of the story.
1:14.6	We'll be bringing up, of course, the key decision in the future of the Subway, which was called the Dual Contracts.
1:20.3	Sounds kind of dry, but it's actually one of the most important decisions that was made
1:24.9	in New York City history.
1:26.4	We'll also talk about how the city, which is franchised out the very first line to a private company,
1:31.4	begins dipping its toe into the idea of running its own Subway line.
1:35.6	And if we have time, we might even talk about some contemporary issues,
1:39.4	such as that second Avenue Subway line, which will be showing up one of these years.
	...

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