Have you ever thought about the tunnels that run under our cities? The size of some of them is pretty huge, well huge tunnels require huge tunnel boring machines. Dark Roasted Blend, the provider of great coffee break info has a special report on these behemoths. Here are a couple teaser photos click on the link below to see the full set.
Photo by adam (Citynoise)
How often do you think about the layers of the city? Just this evening on my way home from work I was thinking about how the sidewalks and the pavement that I was walking on were likely only a couple generations old, it really wasn’t that long ago that our cities were paved with dirt when you consider the scale of history. So what’s under all this pavement, what do you get when you peel back a couple layers of tar and asphalt? In some cases you find things that have long been forgotten, well I suppose that in most cases you are going to find things that have been forgotten. For those of you who are into abandonments, we bring this post from Citynoise.org about the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel.
The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel is officially the world’s oldest subway tunnel, built in 1844 by the cut-and-cover method under a City of Brooklyn Street. It is a half-mile long and accommodated two standard gauge tracks. The tunnel was built in only seven months, using only hand tools and primitive (by today’s standards) equipment. It was built to provide grade separation for early Long Island Rail Road trains that lacked brakes good enough to operate on city streets, and to eliminate vehicular and pedestrian traffic conflicts and delays. This route allowed through trains to travel quickly between Brooklyn and Boston (via ferry service to Connecticut).
The tunnel was supposedly filled in 1861 in a fraud scheme that apparently just sealed off the ends. Bob Diamond rediscovered the long forgotten Atlantic Avenue Tunnel in 1980. The Brooklyn Historic Railway Association (BHRA) was formed in 1982 to restore the historic tunnel. BHRA successfully filed and received designation for the tunnel on the National Register of Historic Places.
Oldest Subway Tunnel in the World – Brooklyn, NY : citynoise.org.
Photo by adam (citynoise)
The Toronto Transit Commission currently operates the largest public transit system in Canada. For the time being it is the most comprehensive rapid transit system in the country. The Toronto system saw the majority of its growth in the late seventies through the early nineties(Transit Toronto 2008). The Subway is run by the Toronto Transit Commission and is one of Canada’s oldest rapid transit systems. The first train left the platform in 1954 when the Young Line opened along a former streetcar route that ran south down Younge Street from Eglinton Avenue to Front Street before making a turn into a station that was then called Bay Street but later renamed Union due to its proximity to the city’s main railway terminus Union Station. Read the rest of this entry »
A Futuristic installation
I have had this link in my list for months and yet every time I go to look at it I usually decide to do something else. I first came across it by way of Weburbanist, and then a blog titled Sketching With David. The Stockholm Metro system has an even hundred stations serving the greater Stockholm area. The system was first opened in 1950 after the conversion of the underground light rail system to a full out metro. The next addition was the Hötorget which ran to the suburbs on the western side of town in 1952 and then the two parts were connected via the Central station and the Old Town with the Green line in 1957. In 1964 an additional two lines were opened that went across the city from the north east via the city center to the south west. The last line to open was in 1975 when two lines were built that run from the city center to the north west. Currently more then 700,000 people use the system daily.
What is most interesting about the system is its decoration. The system is decorated with the work over over 140 different artists, the works range from sculpture, mosaics, paintings, inscriptions and reliefs. The installations have been an ongoing process from back in the 1950s when the system opened, all the way to modern works. One work of note is in the Rissne station where a wall fresco details the history of Earth’s civilizations along both sides of the platform. Another intriguing aspect of the system is that a lot of the walls were left with the raw rock exposed. Personally I think it is a rather inspired way of bringing art to the general public. Many systems have brought art in, but most of the art tends to have been installed with the system itself and appear to have been forgotten. Very few systems are decorated to this level. Moscow bears mention in this regard and merits a write up at a later date. For now enjoy the photos.
The Fresco in Rissne Station
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Assorted Metro Shots
It takes a lot to keep urban transit running, just ask Pat Maietta. Mr. Maietta the senior blacksmith for the Toronto Transit Commission. While it is a profession that has disappeared in much of the rest of the world the TTC has him and his team of three working almost constantly. They are in charge of keeping the TTC’s fleet on the rails, no small feat when you consider that at least half of the fleet is unique to Toronto and doesn’t operate anywhere else.
The globe and mail did a feature on him this Saturday and it offers an interesting look at a profession that is almost unheard of in this day and age but is essential to the TTCs continued operation.
PROFILE: PAT MAIETTA
Iron man
With his anvil and blazing-hot forge, the TTC’s senior blacksmith keeps aging streetcars and subways on track
MATTHEW CAMPBELL
August 9, 2008
Toronto’s massive transit system has run a bewildering array of vehicles over the past 2½ decades, from rattling, aged streetcars to state-of-the-art subway trains. At one time or another, they have all crashed, derailed or broken down.
And Pat Maietta has fixed them all.
Mr. Maietta, a wiry 57-year-old in blue coveralls, is the Toronto Transit Commission’s senior blacksmith, and in his shop no job is too big, too small or, above all, too hot. If it’s metal and it’s broken, it’s up to him.
“If we can’t fix it, it’s done. In the garbage,” Mr. Maietta says.
Growing up in Canada, we were constantly reminded that Canada was “The greatest country in the world to live in”. And by the age of 16 I’d been to Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa, and felt that yeah, Canada was great. Our cities had subways (which are remarkably cool), highways and skyscrapers. Just like New York and London. Then I travelled abroad. Let’s take a quick look at Canada’s 3 urban gems. Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal’s subway systems.
The Montreal Metro
Vancouver SkyTrain
The only one of these three that could even be called a ’system’ is Montreal. Toronto 2 (plus) lines are simply inadequate for handling the population of the city, let alone their greater urban areas that are basically untouched by the rails. North American cities, especially Canadian cities developed and grew in the post war boom. Vancouver’s system isn’t much more than one line that touches the satellite cities, but offers little choice as to destination. Hopefully, with the Olympic changes, Vancouver’s system will grow, leaving only Toronto as an example of how not to serve a city. All this development was along highways and newly built expressways. The mass transit systems were simply overlooked.
As Toronto’s main lines deteriorate, with buckets collecting the drips from the cracks in the ceilings, and Vancouver pushes ahead with a new line for the winter olympics cities all over Asia push ahead, quickly overtaking North American urban transport and rushing to pass the century old European masters.
The maps of modern Asian urban transport lines have developed well beyond the simplistic line maps of the Canadian systems to something either approaching modern art, or a bowl of noodles. Here are two of the busiest, and most complicated subway systems in the world, Seoul and Tokyo.
The Tokyo Map
The Seoul System
It would be fair to point out that Seoul’s GMA population is around the same as the continent of Australia and Tokyo-Yokohama’s population rivals that of Canada. These are cities with population densities unimaginable in Canada, yet these systems are doing one thing that the Canadian systems almost never do. They are growing. Currently in Seoul there are 3 lines under construction (I believe) and numerous more planned. Toronto’s much talked about billion dollar line three connected a shopping mall to the dead end of an already overcrowded line, and is already facing possible closure due to lack of funds.
The most inspirational city transportation system I’ve experienced was in Lyon, France.
The Lyon Metro and Tram System
Transportation systems are an important city network, an efficient rapid transit system will make a city much more livable by giving its citizens a way to move around without having to rely on their cars. In the world there are currently one hundred and sixty-two rapid transit systems, with more then 8,000 km (4,900 miles) of track and 7,000 stations.
I have been fortunate enough to travel on a number of these systems and experience the joys and horrors that can come with them, from the super clean and efficient lines of Fukoka, to what we English teachers termed the ‘refugee line’ in Seoul. Rapid transit systems are one of the most important circulatory systems in the urban area and come in many different configurations and capacities.
Subway systems and subway maps give an interesting perspective on the city. Many of the subway maps that we see as we use the system are conceptual and do not follow the geographic contours of the area in which they operate. However when you look at a subway map that is true to the path it traces through the urban environment you are able to see the city’s major circulatory routes. The way they spread out from the central city they tent to look much more organic then the mental perspective in their passengers minds based off the concept maps. If you take a close look you can see how the system patterns change depending on the surrounding geography. Can you tell if the city is coastal just by looking at the map?
I had put together a whole bunch of metro maps but then today I cam across this site via City Of Ember, a blog that takes a look at urban environments from underground. The site compares the world’s subway systems to scale and is worth a look.
Mass transit systems superimposed over each other
"In Redhill Surry Robert fiddler created a massive pile of hay bales in his yard and his neighbours didn’t really think anything of it, he is a farmer after all. Then about six years later the bales came down and voila a Mock Tudor Castle."
The battle of the Super towers
"It’s always said that a guy who has a big skyscraper has a big … investment portfolio. South Korea is a country where all men aspire to have big … investment portfolios. In the last few years, every town, village and post office box has announced it’s plans to build the tallest building in the neighbourhood, town, province, or galaxy."
France’s Big Bridge
"The Millau bridge in France currently holds the record for the worlds tallest road bridge. At a towering 343m (1,125ft) at its highest point, it is definitely not for anyone afraid of heights. The bridge crosses the River Tarn and the valley of the same name and has been termed by some as “one of the most breathtaking ever built.”
Super Green Buildings, the urban farm
"In the not so distant future, it is predicted that as much as 80% of the world’s population will live in urban areas and, by 2050, the population of the world will increase by as many as 3 billion people. Dr Dickson Despommier suggests Vertical Farms, which are at first a radical idea more suited to science fiction, but, after consideration, is not all that radical at all."
The ‘Hotel Of Doom’ Awakes!
Reuters is reporting that the infamous 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang has awoken from its slumber and is once again seeing construction work. It has been reported that Egypt’s Orascom group has been contracted to refurbish the top floors of what has been termed by some as the ‘Hotel of Doom.’"
Model Activism: Townhouse Neighbourhood 1:35
"It isn’t every day that you come across a new kind of activism, but I would like to suggest model activism as a new term. Wouter Osterhold and Elke Uitentuis, the artists in residence at Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery, used architectural modeling to spur their neighbours into action and spur discourse on the plans for this city neighbourhood."
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