"Not only were new [subway] cars not purchased, the...

Andres "🧠🐛✊" Salomon's posts Post Back to profile

"Not only were new [subway] cars not purchased, the old ones were not repaired. It was about 1956 that there was instituted on the NYC subway system, because of lack of funds, a policy of 'deferred maintenance'. [...] So superbly engineered & maintained had the subway been previously - NY had once been enormously proud of its subways - that it took years for this systematic neglect to take its toll."

I can't even imagine what a well-maintained NYC subway even *looks* like.

Like 26 February at 2:05 | Open on social.ridetrans.it

5 comments

Steven Bodzin bike & subscribe

@Andres4NY gonna write a 1000 page bio of Pablo Escobar called The Powder Broker

26 February at 2:09 | Open on thepit.social

Andres "🧠🐛✊" Salomon

"But, every year after 1956, every criterion of subway performance - on-time runs, individual car breakdowns - disclosed that the toll was steadily mounting. By the late 1960s, the day of full reckoning had arrived. 17,070 runs had to be halted during a single 8mo period. 45 cars were breaking down on an average day. 40 trains were derailed in a single year."

Don't even have space to describe the deaths and horrors that happened, described in the book..

26 February at 2:12 | Open on social.ridetrans.it

Andres "🧠🐛✊" Salomon

"When #RobertMoses came to power in NY
in 1934, the city's mass transportation system was probably the best in the world. When he left power in 1968, it was quite possibly the worst."

26 February at 2:47 | Open on social.ridetrans.it

Drew

@Andres4NY are you doing the 99% Invisible Power Broker read along too?

26 February at 2:50 | Open on urbanists.social

Andres "🧠🐛✊" Salomon

@Drew no, just independently slogging my way through it

26 February at 2:56 | Open on social.ridetrans.it