@@logical.01 True. Having said that both the NYC Subways and SIRTOA are under the umbrella of the New York City Transit Authority. Of course we both know Staten Island Railway used to be a Baltimore and Ohio affiliate.
@@DTD110865 no it doesn’t connect but it’s also a part of the MTA’s NYC Transit and uses the subway cars. It is much more a part of the Subway than it is the MetroNorth or LIRR
It's so disappointing that there have been barely any extensions to the system since 1940. Even worse is that the current system is actually smaller than it was back then. And there are many places throughout the city that really need new lines and extensions to be built. I don't know how New York will fix this problem, they've basically let it build up for 80 years, to the point where the system is nearly unsavable. I gotta have hope that it might be saved one day though.
No, a lot of the old els that were removed were redundant to the much more reliable and higher-capacity Subways nearby. So it makes sense to remove them.
@@Tokkemon But the problem is not necessarily their removal, (the el did have a lot of problems) but the fact that the city promised to rebuild those lines as subways but then never did. And now you have whole swathes of the city that are no longer served by rail. And what makes matters worse, is that (as I stated before) there have been barely any major extensions, or new lines since the 40s. The NYC subway system needs a lot of upgrades and extensions. The city has grown and changed a lot over the past 80 years, and the subway system has not grown to accommodate these changes.
@@tinyelephant1533 Out economy today just isn’t the same anymore as the early 20th century. It literally costed billions and nearly a decade to complete the second avenue extension.
@@SalmonellaLips and that's part of the problem. The problems have built up for 80 years that now, the costs for building the subway have skyrocketed. That's why I said I'm not sure it can ever be fixed at this point.
@@SalmonellaLips also because of the inconsistency of subway construction, the cost and required expertise made both the development and planning exorbitantly expensive . NYC subways I think are among the costliest in the world to expand
I'm very grateful and thankful unto the Lord of Jesus Christ that someone added the powder blue 🔵 8 and ninth Ave Elevated lines and the 9 trains because all four lines is definitely needed and it's gonna definitely happen I tell you that right now. Including the 8/9 V trains.
I think the city taking control of the 3 companies took a huge part in the removal of some of the railways. This meant a lot of the redundant stations were removed but so did a lot of the convenient lines.
I live on 2nd Avenue near 86th street. My Dad moved into the apartment in 1982. But there used to be an elevated subway right outside our window until the early 1950s, although we never saw it. There was also the gigantic Ruppert Beer factory run by the Germans living in Yorkville. That was converted into Ruppert Park and Ruppert Towers in the 1970's. I can only imagine what the vibe was like in my neighborhood back when everyone spoke German, with the train overhead, and the beer factory nearby
Seeing the oldest line disappear leaving a large gap in the Bronx (3rd Avenue) was painful. As I mentioned earlier, it was the most important line when it first got built according to this illustration.
Exactly. That's the reason why they are suffering the conciquints now for tairing down the old 3rd Avenue Elevated line down. I'm glad that they have the R62AS,8 signs on them now and the R142/as has the 8 3rd Avenue Elevated line announcements all the complete stops because I have seeing that on you tube. When they do dirty business God will bring it to pass
I wish the Second Avenue Subway in Manhattan would have been extended to Third Avenue in Bronx, as originally planned. That was the main reason the Third Avenue El was replaced. Assume that the reason for no extension between Manhattan and Bronx is that lack of funds was caused by fare evasion. Today's New York City Transit lost $500 million dollars. That is the kind of value the agency could have used.
I’d love how Queens is the largest borough and the most diverse place in the world but there are literally no subways reaching the east. I’d really hope the expand the 7 train toward the Whitestone and Bayside and the Jamaica lines towards Queens Village and up towards Bayside
At the least you can go from point A to point B with London underground, metro in NYC and in America in general is point A to CITY CENTRE, no links between suburbs at all and that frustrates me
About a year ago I went crazy learning about the it the 3 companies making train lines and the history of the subway and I just wished I had some visual information about this because reading this was hard to imagine. Now this video is beautiful. Thanks so much
There are hundreds of data points represented and only maybe a couple (like Zoological Park) are questionable. The colors and everything are great. I like that you rounded up to the nearest year and didnt get boged down with minute details. For example, I read in a book that IND is short for I.C.O.S. (Subway not R/T). This is a long awaited, much needed and landmark video. Someday we will see one showing the birth and death of all the streetcar and inter-urban systems in North America and the world. Also I would suggest one showing all the different and tricky numbering and letter names and terminals and operating hours of the R/T services as they evolved over the decades. Thank you for making this.
INDdependent, was cift built line, correctly socalled because independent of private companies. BRONX ZOO had its own station, it was not a shuttle line but a destination short of end of full route. Also there were a number of indeed shotr shuttle like bowling green to ferry, and one to former polo baseball stadium. THE NYC TRANSIT MUSEUM, in Brooklyn is a former station that privided service to Brooklyn Hiets. Understand also that services along certain physical tracks changed. Line E now Jammaica Queens to World Trade Center, but once ran in Brooklyn & Queens to Rockaways, a service now provided by A train to 2 terminals there and Lefferts Blvd terminal.
This explains a lot of the defunct frames of the retired, elevated routes and their former alignments. For Marcy Av of Williamsburg and Myrtle/Broadway of Bushwick. Thank you for your dedication.
The city has lots of the old lines still remaining in certain places. The IRT 3rd ave elevated tracks still exist. (As seen being discontinued in 9:25) Growing up nearby, I always marveled at the giant abandoned network of steel, knowing that they were relics of a bygone era
Yea Bob and its fascinating to now how overengineered the City is. There are tunnels and pathways made 100yrs ago that are not being used which could provide rail service to outlying communities. Thats what I saw. Erasing service lines didnt erase the actual space that was tunneled or paved or built. So there is room for an expansion in the future
@@SimplyTechna you say busses like thats equivalent, busses take wayyyyy longer to come, can cary far fewer people & move as slower than a granny with a Walker. There needs to be a train that raplaces the B82 line till canarsie then goes up north till jackson heights.
@@broncomcbane6382 Cranberry, I agree there...but it takes gobs&gobs of money!! City folks do not really want to foot that bill!! Specially with present situations, like the COVID pandemic!!
This was really cool. Thanks for taking the time for putting this together and posting it. NYC MTA system is amazing. Years ago in the outer boroughs of Manhattan, like in Brooklyn and the Bronx there use to be a lot of farm land which was really beautiful but through the years of building these subway lines which brought more people to these areas more homes were built and areas were changed and developed. It must have been amazing having cottages and dirt roads in Brooklyn. It would be great to see pictures of those areas and of those years. To bad none of that survived in any of the boroughs. I think some land and old plantation homes are still standing in Staten Island. Found out on the NYC channel on digital ch 25-1. Cool to watch.
You miss one. In 1954-1955 a connection was built in the Queensboro Plaza area for Broadway lines (BMT) coming out of the 60th street tunnel to connect and be able to run on the Queens Blvd Line (IND) at the Queens Plaza Station. This is what the R Train go though today.
Words can't describe how I feel about this timeline. Somethings were omitted that were kind of relevant to the story yet it's an amazing piece of work. (The G train Crosstown local was built in that time, what was left out is that it followed an existing trolley line. Most subways run on old trolley ROWs) Alot of reasons why the Els were torn down & most are valid. What was not mentioned id that The rubber & oil industry were booming at that time due to increase in cars & they were also a major influence in dismantling the Els. I must also add that over 250 years later, with all those El's & trolley lines, it was faster in 1888 to get from Flushing to Far Rockaway than today in 2021.
@@vectoor91 no it was an attempt by the NYC government to have the IRT and the BMT forcibly sell out to the city owned IND by either making them go bankrupt, loose lots of money each year or buy out lines that the competitors use and then tell them to either sell out to the IND or loose access to the lines which would end up with a collapsing ridership and profitability of the lines leading to eventual bankruptcy and effective nationalisation by the city or state and this is exactly what happened, the city rapidly expanded the newly created IND in an effort to bankrupt the IRT by providing an artificially cheap service and forcing low fares on the IRT and BMT making them unprofitable (only the IRT became unprofitable) and then they purchased (I think that’s what they did but I may be wrong here) lines used by the BMT and so when the IRT was loosing loads of money due to the IND providing an artificially better service and having low fares forced on them that they could not afford they kept loosing money in the 1930s which is when they sold out to the city and so then the IND told the BMT that they either sell the company to the government or loose rights to operate trains into downtown Manhattan on IND tracks and so they ended up selling the BMT to the city otherwise ridership would collapse and the BMT would loose money and eventually sell out to the city or go bankrupt and so either way both companies were fucked.
I remember after moving to Canarsie in the mid 1990's, when I was on Rockaway, I used to see some tracks on the road, and been told that the trains used to go to the pier.
Really an awesome piece of research and skillful animation. Played it at one quarter of normal speed to better to be able to take it all in. I rode many of these lines when I lived in NY in the seventies. Respect!
INCREDIBLE! This is awesome. Must've taken a lot of research in addition to the technical aspects of creating the map. I had no idea some areas and neighborhoods had subway services. Like the service from Rockaway Parking to Canarsie Pier. WoW!
Great video! Love stuff like this. Just a few minor errors I noticed: at 7:43, you wrote West 4th Street instead of 47th-50th, and at 9:56 you forgot the 3 in 34th-Hudson Yards
I like how there was a massive gap between 2001 and 2015. Also, I played this at 0.25 playback speed because it was going way to fast for me to read the caption and watch the line being extended on the map.
The Ind was built by the city and that was a lot of lines. I think it was mainly that the city stopped growing like crazy, but cost of construction was also rising fast. New York is an outlier to this day in how ridiculously expensive it is to build things.
I'm not sure how difficult this would be to execute but I feel like this map would be a lot nicer if it had the context of the streets and neighborhoods growing with the subway. The Flushing Line, for example, was built in a time where Queens was largely farmland, but the subway actually grew the surrounding areas into the dense Queens we know today. It'd be nice to see how those neighborhoods grew as an extension of the growing subway system.
It's bittersweet that several of the lines like the "El" did not survive past the twentieth century. The Bronx would of benefited with a crosstown line running between East and West, the same can be said at 125th street in Manhattan and as well as a North and South crosstown line between Queens and Brooklyn.
The final expansion of the Second Ave line, which I will not live to see, is its extension to Broadway under 125th Street. If it was not for Robert Moses a crosstown line could have been put in along the Cross Bronx Expressway then taken across the Throgs Neck Bridge into Queens (Jamaica then Kennedy Airport?).
@@drakeil Robert Moses had nothing to do with this. The plans for a west to east crosstown line were actually intended for the northern Bronx, one of which was a proposed extension of the IND Concourse Line. The closest thing to a west to east subway in the Bronx is the IRT Pelham Line.
@@TheCriminalViolin Fair point, I wish more places had subways. I'd trade a confusing transit system for horrible sprawl, traffic, and an inability to interact with one's own community.
Judging by this video, NYC's subway lines and metro rails is like Windows '98 pipe screen. I can give them the title "The Tokyo of the US". Keep up the good work!
This was truly truly amazing now I have a better understanding of how all these subway stations and names were created you learn something new everyday at any time much appreciated strongly appreciate it.
A huge shame that while most subway systems in the world keep getting larger and larger, ours has actually gotten smaller and smaller in the last eight decades as many els were torn down and never replaced
This explains why some line connections are so weird, such as the Fulton Street Elevated and Rockaway Lines or the Culver Line above and below Church Ave.
Anyone else notice that the subway system was more extensive over 7 decades ago? A lot of places formerly served by elevated lines became transit deserts, with only slow buses that get stuck in traffic available for residents. The last major expansion seemed to be in the 1950s. In fact, much of the system was built in before the 1920s!
I think about ALL the man hours,blood,sweat and tears everytime I ride the subway. It keeps our city running. It's come a long way since it first started. I'm grateful for MTA.
It's incredible to me that government and business were able to accomplish so much in the late 1800's and early to mid 1900's yet today spending on infrastructure is such a big deal today.
nixon made everything much harder to build to protect the environment good for restricting unrestricted highway expansion at the time, bad for building any form of subway and people started building more densely and forgetting what allowed the city to grow so much in the first place
I've been waiting ages for someone to make a full history of New York CIty's metro system including the early elevated lines. All the sources I see start with the first underground subway line, but the elevated lines should count too, surely.
Great illustration! I have a couple of suggestions for version 2.0. First, the pre-subway Els should really be in a different color than the subway lines. They were too lightly built to carry steel subway cars, and were either rebuilt as subway lines or torn down. After showing them in blue and green prior to 1940, they suddenly turn black. They should have been black all along, with those upgraded to subway lines turning other colors as they were rebuilt. Also, if you are going to include the pre-subway Brighton Line, you should also include the pre-subway West End, Sea Beach and Culver, again turning them green once they become upgraded to subway. As part of the elevated system, the Brighton Line connected to the Fulton Street El, with the post-subway remnant becoming the Franklin Street shuttle. The same may be said of the old NY, Westchester and Boston RR, now the Dyre Avenue line. It should show up as a black line, then convert to blue in 1941.
@@danielj4042 Right..correct...So the BMT decided to.terminate the line @ Rockaway Pkwy/105thSt...and construct a transit yard adjacent to that teminus station.
I remember when the Subway sandwich shops had New York subway map wallpaper. Some still do, but the wallpaper is now dark yellow print on light yellow wallpaper, as opposed to black print on white wallpaper.
Amazing work! It seems to me that before the Great Takeover, the subway companies in the first half of the 20th century were doing a lot of construction, building and expanding the subway system far and wide. Then the MTA comes in, takes over and barely anything gets built in like 50 years.
Thats the way City Goverment is. One result is that Queens past Jamaica in the south past E, F & J terinals and past 7 in flushing are transit desertd, more as Eastern 1/2 of coutty is past them.
Great video, Consider using your editor's camera movement settings to soften the stops in your camera moves. They are slightly sudden and jarring. Aside from this.. this is very good,and accurate. A 3D version with smother camera movement would be sweet
Beautifully done, thanks for taking the time. Interesting to see how the east side of Manhattan used to be served. Separately, how is it that New York still doesn’t have a high speed connection to JFK & LaGuardia from either Grand Central and/or Penn station - never mind just running their normal subway to the airport so you don’t need to fight with luggage switching to the air train extra cost service. I can think of no other world city (ny, Tokyo, London etc) where that is true. Do love that live subway map they’re doing though, so the subway isn’t completely useless when they put their mind to something (haven’t used live subway map myself, just seen video but looks cool).
They wanna create something like that for LaGuardia Airport. The Port Authority wants to build a new AirTrain line from LGA to the Mets Willets Point 7 station (which would obviously be rebuilt and enlarged) and the new station would then serve the new LIRR LaGuardia Express train using an upgraded Port Washington branch. That would terminate at the new LIRR Grand Central Station that’s due to open in a few years.
@@nonenoneonenonenone I haven’t lived in New York for about 2 decades now but unless I’m mistaken very little progress has been made on connecting airports to Manhattan with modern public transport. JFK is still relying on that stupid ‘air train’ service which means you need to transfer to a different mode on your trip at least once if going from Times Sq as a random central example- and I just used google maps and it suggested 2 transfers for quickest route. There is no subway line that runs directly to the terminals, nevermind an express frequent train directly from Grand Central or Penn Stations to the terminal. That’s insane, no other major world city is that badly connected to its major international airport. La Guardia is even worse, requiring a stupid transfer to bus in that example and Newark isn’t really better. I’ve also lived in London so I’ll use that example (but Paris is likewise well connected as is Tokyo). Heathrow has a direct ‘tube’ line going to terminals without requiring a transfer from central London locations and beyond that it has the Heathrow express which leaves from a major train station in central London and goes directly to airport terminal in 15min every 15min and finally they are about to open that Elizabeth line that goes directly from terminal threw several major train stations and subway/tube stops/interchanges. All 6 London airports have express train services to their terminals from central major train stations in city center. New York’s connections to its airports using public transport is an embarrassment, it’s not even close to competitive.
Just discovered your channel several days ago. Excellent detail on the early Brooklyn els, something a of of people don't pay much attention to, and even I, a transit aficionado, didn't quite understand the alignments of early BRT lines. Anyway, is there a chance you could do Boston, Mass. next? There's a lot to unpack from such a small system (small vis-a-vis NYC).
Most of the subway lines in Brooklyn began as steam railroads that were electrified with trolley wire, then elevated, put into cuts, or on embankments. The outer end of the Canarsie line remained on the ground.
Toronto loves debating transit but hates building it. Seems like they’re finally getting their act together but Eglington Crosstown will have a diminished service quality to the existing Subway and it remains to be seen if the Ontario Line gets built. The regional rail’s ambitious transformation is just gonna overload the existing inadequate system even more.
@@eriklakeland3857 yeah, the Eglington crosstown has been under construction for soooooo damn long. And now metrolinx is making an LRT on Finch, and i highly doubt this'll be completed on time
NYC subway system: * is being extended * Me: "How the hell can it be so huge??" Also me: "What the hell? The year is 1916? It was this big over 100 years ago??" In Finland we have only one subway system and it's only 35 km long
As someone from NYC and had a fond love for NYC Subway, It really bothers me that some of the lines especially 3rd Ave in The Bronx in the 1970s were shut down for replacement that never came and was only agreed upon with a bunch of future line drawn on map with broke city in charge of the project. In the end that El was torn down for selfish, racist, and fear-mongering reasons. "Oh the el offers too many hiding places for people to sell drugs and commit crime." but no other el in city had this problem too? Yeah I call bullshit. That was move to hurt the community not protect it. Now all we got on 3rd Ave is lousy BRT with a fancy paint job and dedicated lane everyone parks on.
Select Bus Service is mini BRT. Look up the bus system in Bogota Columbia or in Curitiba Brazil. Now THAT’S gold standard. Almost a surface subway. But the NIMBY’s of NYC would never allow it to happen. Just like the shutdown the extension of the Astoria line to LaGuardia Airport. It’s only two damn miles away from the Astoria terminal!!!!
@@rasheedwhite4647 that is 100% true the Bx15 buses is very good service what. People are saying is that is not the same with out the 8 Rd Avenue elevated line anymore. I still don't understand why did they took the BX 55 buses and made the BX 15 that didn't make sense
There's an error here. The Brooklyn 5th Ave elevated, when it moved south, switched to 3rd Ave. On this map, it's shown as 4th, overlapping with the 4th Ave subway.
gotta love how they expanded to the Bronx before expanding to queens 0:59 btw rockaway Av is closer to broadway junction but I understand this was like the 2nd animation you’ve ever made here
As a lover of both maps and urban rail transit, this was an amazing video to watch. I am looking forward to watching your other videos. Could you make one about Chicago's L trains?
great video of the expansion of the nyc subway before the war so many lines and branches opened there was some decline after the war but thankfully most lines were kept and some extensions happened afterwards
@Breanna Northrup you were still able to during rush hours up until about 2010 or so when the M ran from Middle Village to Bay Parkway via the R and J lines through Manhattan. When they ended the V line and combined it with the M, that was the end of that.
Note how the map shows that Astoria and Flushing lines were operated jointly by IRT and BMT in 1930 or so. I recall seeing old station entrance signs offering service to Astoria, Corona, and Flushing.
ROOSEVELT ISLAND is cable tramway of elevated nature over water. AIR TRAIN is airport elevated train to subways and Long Island Railways. These not part of subway system STATEN ISLAND was part of Baltimore & Ohio heavy rail, multi state system. From earliest dats it did serve many stations by local trains. Taken over by city after ConRail received permission to abandon. (Though it was electrified to subways BMT Division B) standards in teens, and in 20s proposed Tunnel or Bridge was to include tracks to link to either what today is R line ir former 3rd ave elevated line.
Amazingly enough only in last 20 years has it been added to subway maps. It has only 1 underground station and is mostly elevated or open below ground cuts. ONLY 1 of 3 routes still carry passegers, only bare ground of North Shore & South Beach exists.
Claim your "pre-1000 subscribers" ticket here!
They are running out very fast :)
I will
Me
Dammit!! Too late.
Can you do bostons mbta
good work on the video.
I love how staten island isn't even acknowledged. True New York spirt
They don't have a subway. Staten Island Railway and the never finished St. George Tunnel, but no actual subway.
@Whirlmode Flutter That has nothing to do with the issue.
@@logical.01 True. Having said that both the NYC Subways and SIRTOA are under the umbrella of the New York City Transit Authority.
Of course we both know Staten Island Railway used to be a Baltimore and Ohio affiliate.
@@DTD110865 no it doesn’t connect but it’s also a part of the MTA’s NYC Transit and uses the subway cars. It is much more a part of the Subway than it is the MetroNorth or LIRR
New Yorker here, where is Staten Island ? Lol
It's so disappointing that there have been barely any extensions to the system since 1940. Even worse is that the current system is actually smaller than it was back then. And there are many places throughout the city that really need new lines and extensions to be built. I don't know how New York will fix this problem, they've basically let it build up for 80 years, to the point where the system is nearly unsavable. I gotta have hope that it might be saved one day though.
No, a lot of the old els that were removed were redundant to the much more reliable and higher-capacity Subways nearby. So it makes sense to remove them.
@@Tokkemon But the problem is not necessarily their removal, (the el did have a lot of problems) but the fact that the city promised to rebuild those lines as subways but then never did. And now you have whole swathes of the city that are no longer served by rail. And what makes matters worse, is that (as I stated before) there have been barely any major extensions, or new lines since the 40s. The NYC subway system needs a lot of upgrades and extensions. The city has grown and changed a lot over the past 80 years, and the subway system has not grown to accommodate these changes.
@@tinyelephant1533 Out economy today just isn’t the same anymore as the early 20th century. It literally costed billions and nearly a decade to complete the second avenue extension.
@@SalmonellaLips and that's part of the problem. The problems have built up for 80 years that now, the costs for building the subway have skyrocketed. That's why I said I'm not sure it can ever be fixed at this point.
@@SalmonellaLips also because of the inconsistency of subway construction, the cost and required expertise made both the development and planning exorbitantly expensive . NYC subways I think are among the costliest in the world to expand
As a New Yorker, Im glad someone finally simplified the system's history. Great work!
Thank you!
@@MetroLinerhappy third birthday on this video it was a childhood memory for me
I'm very grateful and thankful unto the Lord of Jesus Christ that someone added the powder blue 🔵 8 and ninth Ave Elevated lines and the 9 trains because all four lines is definitely needed and it's gonna definitely happen I tell you that right now. Including the 8/9 V trains.
@@MetroLiner hey bro can you add the metro length here please?
I think the city taking control of the 3 companies took a huge part in the removal of some of the railways. This meant a lot of the redundant stations were removed but so did a lot of the convenient lines.
Yup, Many EL's were Removed.
@@michaelmorales1475 Which might have contributed to Manhattan's soaring rents.
I live on 2nd Avenue near 86th street. My Dad moved into the apartment in 1982. But there used to be an elevated subway right outside our window until the early 1950s, although we never saw it. There was also the gigantic Ruppert Beer factory run by the Germans living in Yorkville. That was converted into Ruppert Park and Ruppert Towers in the 1970's. I can only imagine what the vibe was like in my neighborhood back when everyone spoke German, with the train overhead, and the beer factory nearby
Seeing the oldest line disappear leaving a large gap in the Bronx (3rd Avenue) was painful. As I mentioned earlier, it was the most important line when it first got built according to this illustration.
Exactly. That's the reason why they are suffering the conciquints now for tairing down the old 3rd Avenue Elevated line down. I'm glad that they have the R62AS,8 signs on them now and the R142/as has the 8 3rd Avenue Elevated line announcements all the complete stops because I have seeing that on you tube. When they do dirty business God will bring it to pass
Nothing cannot replace or run over the 8 3rd Avenue Elevated line anymore.
@@leecornwell5632 indeed.
@@leecornwell5632 I rode on it in 1973, the year before it ended on April 1974. It was also known as the Central Bronx Elevated.
I wish the Second Avenue Subway in Manhattan would have been extended to Third Avenue in Bronx, as originally planned. That was the main reason the Third Avenue El was replaced. Assume that the reason for no extension between Manhattan and Bronx is that lack of funds was caused by fare evasion. Today's New York City Transit lost $500 million dollars. That is the kind of value the agency could have used.
Elevated lines: *exist
1940s: I'm gonna end this man's career...
At least we still have the 7 train and J/Z trains :(
@@matthewhernandez8342 and also the 1 train.
@@bmendez3782 what do you mean
Actually most trains run elevated outside of Manhattan. The closer the train gets to Manhattan, the more underground it goes.
@RYAN AYALA That is entirely untrue. I have no idea where you got this information.
I’d love how Queens is the largest borough and the most diverse place in the world but there are literally no subways reaching the east. I’d really hope the expand the 7 train toward the Whitestone and Bayside and the Jamaica lines towards Queens Village and up towards Bayside
It's the Archer Avenue and Queens Boulevard lines that need to be expanded beyond Jamaica. Queens Village and Laurelton would be the destinations.
@Caleb Lee because queens is the joke of new york.
@@miguelmejia4656 No, that's Staten Island
@@miguelmejia4656 Isn't it The Best Borough in NYC?
@@michaelmorales1475 the best borough in new york is brooklyn.
The hard work you put yourself through to get the information and animate it is incredible so good job m8
And I saw London as a complete mess...
Wait till you see Tokyo
@@sweet813one Oh god.
Yeah our subway is a mess.Be careful or you'll end up in The Bronx when your trying to get to Brooklyn.lol
At the least you can go from point A to point B with London underground, metro in NYC and in America in general is point A to CITY CENTRE, no links between suburbs at all and that frustrates me
@@hwg5039 you got that other way around NYC subway is built as a grid London underground is only in central london
About a year ago I went crazy learning about the it the 3 companies making train lines and the history of the subway and I just wished I had some visual information about this because reading this was hard to imagine. Now this video is beautiful. Thanks so much
There are hundreds of data points represented and only maybe a couple (like Zoological Park) are questionable. The colors and everything are great. I like that you rounded up to the nearest year and didnt get boged down with minute details. For example, I read in a book that IND is short for I.C.O.S. (Subway not R/T). This is a long awaited, much needed and landmark video. Someday we will see one showing the birth and death of all the streetcar and inter-urban systems in North America and the world. Also I would suggest one showing all the different and tricky numbering and letter names and terminals and operating hours of the R/T services as they evolved over the decades. Thank you for making this.
As I remember it, the IND stood for Independent of Private Ownership Interests.
INDdependent, was cift built line, correctly socalled because independent of private companies.
BRONX ZOO had its own station, it was not a shuttle line but a destination short of end of full route.
Also there were a number of indeed shotr shuttle like bowling green to ferry, and one to former polo baseball stadium. THE NYC TRANSIT MUSEUM, in Brooklyn is a former station that privided service to Brooklyn Hiets.
Understand also that services along certain physical tracks changed.
Line E now Jammaica Queens to World Trade Center, but once ran in Brooklyn & Queens to Rockaways, a service now provided by A train to 2 terminals there and Lefferts Blvd terminal.
ua-cam.com/video/6ulbKlCOjho/v-deo.html here's the link for NYC subway 1961-2026
They should call this whole system "The Spaghetti Rail System". I love the animations, especially how the names slide along as the lines are extended.
..Love it!! Was kindof hard to digest as it goes along..had to back-track just to get every thing in sequence..
Forget about it
This explains a lot of the defunct frames of the retired, elevated routes and their former alignments. For Marcy Av of Williamsburg and Myrtle/Broadway of Bushwick.
Thank you for your dedication.
right. how elevated frames go both ways on Myrtle Ave but there are no train tracks or stairs on the southbound side of Broadway
The city has lots of the old lines still remaining in certain places.
The IRT 3rd ave elevated tracks still exist. (As seen being discontinued in 9:25) Growing up nearby, I always marveled at the giant abandoned network of steel, knowing that they were relics of a bygone era
@@shasan2393 I hear ya
@@broncomcbane6382 Yes, but why were some removed when there was no parallel subway, only buses?
@@nonenoneonenonenone lack of $ I guess
Interesting to see what areas are currently underserved, including some where lines were closed.
The ones that arent really near a subway have at least 2 bus lines to help serve them.
@@SimplyTechna no train line?
Yea Bob and its fascinating to now how overengineered the City is. There are tunnels and pathways made 100yrs ago that are not being used which could provide rail service to outlying communities. Thats what I saw. Erasing service lines didnt erase the actual space that was tunneled or paved or built. So there is room for an expansion in the future
@@SimplyTechna you say busses like thats equivalent, busses take wayyyyy longer to come, can cary far fewer people & move as slower than a granny with a Walker. There needs to be a train that raplaces the B82 line till canarsie then goes up north till jackson heights.
@@broncomcbane6382 Cranberry, I agree there...but it takes gobs&gobs of money!! City folks do not really want to foot that bill!! Specially with present situations, like the COVID pandemic!!
This was really cool. Thanks for taking the time for putting this together and posting it. NYC MTA system is amazing.
Years ago in the outer boroughs of Manhattan, like in Brooklyn and the Bronx there use to be a lot of farm land which was really beautiful but through the years of building these subway lines which brought more people to these areas more homes were built and areas were changed and developed. It must have been amazing having cottages and dirt roads in Brooklyn. It would be great to see pictures of those areas and of those years. To bad none of that survived in any of the boroughs. I think some land and old plantation homes are still standing in Staten Island. Found out on the NYC channel on digital ch 25-1. Cool to watch.
You miss one. In 1954-1955 a connection was built in the Queensboro Plaza area for Broadway lines (BMT) coming out of the 60th street tunnel to connect and be able to run on the Queens Blvd Line (IND) at the Queens Plaza Station. This is what the R Train go though today.
Whoever runs this channel.... you are a legend
It's crazy the timespan of how quickly in a year they're extending, building or demolishing certain lines in a year span is ridiculously crazy😮
Words can't describe how I feel about this timeline. Somethings were omitted that were kind of relevant to the story yet it's an amazing piece of work. (The G train Crosstown local was built in that time, what was left out is that it followed an existing trolley line. Most subways run on old trolley ROWs)
Alot of reasons why the Els were torn down & most are valid. What was not mentioned id that The rubber & oil industry were booming at that time due to increase in cars & they were also a major influence in dismantling the Els.
I must also add that over 250 years later, with all those El's & trolley lines, it was faster in 1888 to get from Flushing to Far Rockaway than today in 2021.
The elevated lines were wearing out, rickety and slow, and not very accessible. Not everything is a conspiracy.
there really isnt much of a demand to go from flushing to rockaway
Trolleys not included.
I hate seeing the lines fade, WE NEED MORE TRAINS
That’s America for you.
yep
1:we need more trains
2:we need platform doors
3:we don't need price rising
Some lines have to fade simply because they aren't efficient anymore. So they just use nearby subway stations that are larger.
I mean that’s why there’s buses everywhere-
@@louisianafriesss I honestly rather a train only system
Why not do Tokyo Metro. And see how confusing it really is.
I will do Tokyo someday for sure!
@@MetroLiner And make NYC's and London's subways/metros seem nice and tidy lol.
@@MetroLiner It's gonna get messy.......
@@MetroLiner Moscow, Berlin or Paris pls
The final boss must be the seoul metro..
Great video. Only major mistake I caught was the Brooklyn 5th Ave elevated ran along 3rd Ave south of 36th street, not 4th Ave.
no one:
6:37 IND: expansion go brrrr
The amount of subway built in the 30s is pretty astounding. Was that part of the new deal?
I think IND was a savior.. they changed the game.
@@vectoor91 probably
Ikr
@@vectoor91 no it was an attempt by the NYC government to have the IRT and the BMT forcibly sell out to the city owned IND by either making them go bankrupt, loose lots of money each year or buy out lines that the competitors use and then tell them to either sell out to the IND or loose access to the lines which would end up with a collapsing ridership and profitability of the lines leading to eventual bankruptcy and effective nationalisation by the city or state and this is exactly what happened, the city rapidly expanded the newly created IND in an effort to bankrupt the IRT by providing an artificially cheap service and forcing low fares on the IRT and BMT making them unprofitable (only the IRT became unprofitable) and then they purchased (I think that’s what they did but I may be wrong here) lines used by the BMT and so when the IRT was loosing loads of money due to the IND providing an artificially better service and having low fares forced on them that they could not afford they kept loosing money in the 1930s which is when they sold out to the city and so then the IND told the BMT that they either sell the company to the government or loose rights to operate trains into downtown Manhattan on IND tracks and so they ended up selling the BMT to the city otherwise ridership would collapse and the BMT would loose money and eventually sell out to the city or go bankrupt and so either way both companies were fucked.
Only two videos so far, but both are excellent. I'm subscribing to see what goodies you have in store for us. Best of luck in growing!
I remember after moving to Canarsie in the mid 1990's, when I was on Rockaway, I used to see some tracks on the road, and been told that the trains used to go to the pier.
..Correct..
I used to live in Canarsie and the Rockaway Parkway stop was my station. I had no idea the trains used to go all the wall out to the pier.
Really an awesome piece of research and skillful animation. Played it at one quarter of normal speed to better to be able to take it all in. I rode many of these lines when I lived in NY in the seventies. Respect!
INCREDIBLE! This is awesome. Must've taken a lot of research in addition to the technical aspects of creating the map. I had no idea some areas and neighborhoods had subway services. Like the service from Rockaway Parking to Canarsie Pier. WoW!
Great video! Love stuff like this. Just a few minor errors I noticed: at 7:43, you wrote West 4th Street instead of 47th-50th, and at 9:56 you forgot the 3 in 34th-Hudson Yards
I like how there was a massive gap between 2001 and 2015. Also, I played this at 0.25 playback speed because it was going way to fast for me to read the caption and watch the line being extended on the map.
It’s amazing how, once the city took over the subways, they almost completely stopped building and started getting rid of the subway lines.
The Ind was built by the city and that was a lot of lines. I think it was mainly that the city stopped growing like crazy, but cost of construction was also rising fast. New York is an outlier to this day in how ridiculously expensive it is to build things.
@@vectoor91 I think it was the monopolisation by the city. When they were competing it worked fine.
@@mr.jamster8414no
I'm not sure how difficult this would be to execute but I feel like this map would be a lot nicer if it had the context of the streets and neighborhoods growing with the subway. The Flushing Line, for example, was built in a time where Queens was largely farmland, but the subway actually grew the surrounding areas into the dense Queens we know today. It'd be nice to see how those neighborhoods grew as an extension of the growing subway system.
It's bittersweet that several of the lines like the "El" did not survive past the twentieth century. The Bronx would of benefited with a crosstown line running between East and West, the same can be said at 125th street in Manhattan and as well as a North and South crosstown line between Queens and Brooklyn.
Yesssssss they all need it.
Yeah we would.If you wanna go east to west you go down then up or take a car.
@@PrivateMcPrivate or board a crowded crosstown bus, there’s a reason the Bx12 SBS is so damn packed
The final expansion of the Second Ave line, which I will not live to see, is its extension to Broadway under 125th Street. If it was not for Robert Moses a crosstown line could have been put in along the Cross Bronx Expressway then taken across the Throgs Neck Bridge into Queens (Jamaica then Kennedy Airport?).
@@drakeil Robert Moses had nothing to do with this. The plans for a west to east crosstown line were actually intended for the northern Bronx, one of which was a proposed extension of the IND Concourse Line. The closest thing to a west to east subway in the Bronx is the IRT Pelham Line.
Wow, I'm only in 1939 and already feel lost just looking at it.
That's a overall good problem to have, as it means you're swamped with choices of where to go to with a heavy saturation of various transit lines.
@@TheCriminalViolin Fair point, I wish more places had subways. I'd trade a confusing transit system for horrible sprawl, traffic, and an inability to interact with one's own community.
Yeah, starts getting confusing in the mid/late 1920's..
@@matthewgoodman7588 we could have had so much more. read about the IND second system
Judging by this video, NYC's subway lines and metro rails is like Windows '98 pipe screen. I can give them the title "The Tokyo of the US". Keep up the good work!
This was truly truly amazing now I have a better understanding of how all these subway stations and names were created you learn something new everyday at any time much appreciated strongly appreciate it.
Honestly, this must of taken so much time but it was 100% worth it
Amen to that!! Thanks MetroLiner, et al..!!
I wish this animation used different colors for the elevated and early subway networks.
A huge shame that while most subway systems in the world keep getting larger and larger, ours has actually gotten smaller and smaller in the last eight decades as many els were torn down and never replaced
Ah well, compared to other cities which have zip, NYC is still lucky to have a somewhat extensive system
@@armorpro573he meant global cities not American
@@ahmedzakikhan7639 Yeah I know that
This explains why some line connections are so weird, such as the Fulton Street Elevated and Rockaway Lines or the Culver Line above and below Church Ave.
Anyone else notice that the subway system was more extensive over 7 decades ago? A lot of places formerly served by elevated lines became transit deserts, with only slow buses that get stuck in traffic available for residents. The last major expansion seemed to be in the 1950s. In fact, much of the system was built in before the 1920s!
and the same old-fashioned type of subway trains have been served for over 50 years!
couldn't imagine how much research went into this. Good video!!! :)
Please make a video about Moscow! This is a big city with a very developed metro, but the system there is very simple!
Love that you started with the elevated lines
I don't mean to be nit picky but you forgot to put IND Court St at 7:03 (and its closure in 1946). Anyways, this is such a great video!
That's the video I was waiting for!
I'm absolutely in love with these visualizations of history of metros/subways. Please make more!
Yes! I love to study history, am a urban-rail afficianado, and a total map geek. All three of them come together here.
I think about ALL the man hours,blood,sweat and tears everytime I ride the subway. It keeps our city running. It's come a long way since it first started. I'm grateful for MTA.
It's incredible to me that government and business were able to accomplish so much in the late 1800's and early to mid 1900's yet today spending on infrastructure is such a big deal today.
nixon made everything much harder to build to protect the environment
good for restricting unrestricted highway expansion at the time, bad for building any form of subway
and people started building more densely and forgetting what allowed the city to grow so much in the first place
I've been waiting ages for someone to make a full history of New York CIty's metro system including the early elevated lines. All the sources I see start with the first underground subway line, but the elevated lines should count too, surely.
They exist. Maybe on paper.
Great illustration! I have a couple of suggestions for version 2.0.
First, the pre-subway Els should really be in a different color than the subway lines. They were too lightly built to carry steel subway cars, and were either rebuilt as subway lines or torn down. After showing them in blue and green prior to 1940, they suddenly turn black. They should have been black all along, with those upgraded to subway lines turning other colors as they were rebuilt.
Also, if you are going to include the pre-subway Brighton Line, you should also include the pre-subway West End, Sea Beach and Culver, again turning them green once they become upgraded to subway. As part of the elevated system, the Brighton Line connected to the Fulton Street El, with the post-subway remnant becoming the Franklin Street shuttle.
The same may be said of the old NY, Westchester and Boston RR, now the Dyre Avenue line. It should show up as a black line, then convert to blue in 1941.
But the identification should also include the numbers, and any other changes. No one calls it the Dyre line anymore.
And the E to 179 St before Archer Av and after the J cut service back to 121 St
I love this! I was waiting for someone to do this, thank you so much!!!!
Glad you liked it!!
Wow, as a New York City Subway history buff, this is amazing. It must’ve taken forever! What program did you use for the animation?
Thank you! I used Adobe After Effects.
New York city subway
Also, I am a subway buff, and what I do not know about the New York City Subway is so much that is enough to kill me.
I can't believe that the L line used to be connected to Canaries Pier! I wonder why they shut it down
tunnels still.have to be there though,.under the belt parkway
It was street level and once there was electrification they didn’t want that.
Canarsie and that whole section of Brooklyn could really use subway service though. It's rough
@@danielj4042 Right..correct...So the BMT decided to.terminate the line @ Rockaway Pkwy/105thSt...and construct a transit yard adjacent to that teminus station.
@@broncomcbane6382 some tunnels are actually still there which is interesting
Awesome that you also include the El's of the 19th century! Amazing video! Liked and subbed!
3:38
Top 10 saddest anime deaths
Ugh. Weeb!
This was an amazing trip down memory lane. All those stops. The train is a part of you if you live there. You love it and hate it.
I remember when the Subway sandwich shops had New York subway map wallpaper.
Some still do, but the wallpaper is now dark yellow print on light yellow wallpaper, as opposed to black print on white wallpaper.
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Thank you for this! You must have spent forever making it. Love from New England ❤️
Amazing. I can't believe how much of this was built in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Thank you for the hard work , cant believe the M line has been around since 1889
I love you. I wanted this video so bad for years and I finally got it.
This was very cool to watch, seeing how some lines were removed and some got extended.
Nice work! One of Berlin would be great... with the division of the system during the time of the partition of the city
That would be cool! Thanks for the suggestion.
You‘re welcome!
this is the the coolest thing i’ve seen all week! great job!
Amazing work! It seems to me that before the Great Takeover, the subway companies in the first half of the 20th century were doing a lot of construction, building and expanding the subway system far and wide. Then the MTA comes in, takes over and barely anything gets built in like 50 years.
Thats the way City Goverment is. One result is that Queens past Jamaica in the south past E, F & J terinals and past 7 in flushing are transit desertd, more as Eastern 1/2 of coutty is past them.
The city was nearly bankrupt in the 1960s.
Great video, Consider using your editor's camera movement settings to soften the stops in your camera moves. They are slightly sudden and jarring.
Aside from this.. this is very good,and accurate.
A 3D version with smother camera movement would be sweet
Beautifully done, thanks for taking the time. Interesting to see how the east side of Manhattan used to be served. Separately, how is it that New York still doesn’t have a high speed connection to JFK & LaGuardia from either Grand Central and/or Penn station - never mind just running their normal subway to the airport so you don’t need to fight with luggage switching to the air train extra cost service. I can think of no other world city (ny, Tokyo, London etc) where that is true. Do love that live subway map they’re doing though, so the subway isn’t completely useless when they put their mind to something (haven’t used live subway map myself, just seen video but looks cool).
They wanna create something like that for LaGuardia Airport. The Port Authority wants to build a new AirTrain line from LGA to the Mets Willets Point 7 station (which would obviously be rebuilt and enlarged) and the new station would then serve the new LIRR LaGuardia Express train using an upgraded Port Washington branch. That would terminate at the new LIRR Grand Central Station that’s due to open in a few years.
I mean LA doesn’t even have a train that goes directly to the airport. The us is pretty behind when it comes to public transportation
There is such a service for JFK. For LaGuardia, it was easy to go by taxi.
@@nonenoneonenonenone I haven’t lived in New York for about 2 decades now but unless I’m mistaken very little progress has been made on connecting airports to Manhattan with modern public transport. JFK is still relying on that stupid ‘air train’ service which means you need to transfer to a different mode on your trip at least once if going from Times Sq as a random central example- and I just used google maps and it suggested 2 transfers for quickest route. There is no subway line that runs directly to the terminals, nevermind an express frequent train directly from Grand Central or Penn Stations to the terminal. That’s insane, no other major world city is that badly connected to its major international airport. La Guardia is even worse, requiring a stupid transfer to bus in that example and Newark isn’t really better. I’ve also lived in London so I’ll use that example (but Paris is likewise well connected as is Tokyo). Heathrow has a direct ‘tube’ line going to terminals without requiring a transfer from central London locations and beyond that it has the Heathrow express which leaves from a major train station in central London and goes directly to airport terminal in 15min every 15min and finally they are about to open that Elizabeth line that goes directly from terminal threw several major train stations and subway/tube stops/interchanges. All 6 London airports have express train services to their terminals from central major train stations in city center. New York’s connections to its airports using public transport is an embarrassment, it’s not even close to competitive.
Just discovered your channel several days ago. Excellent detail on the early Brooklyn els, something a of of people don't pay much attention to, and even I, a transit aficionado, didn't quite understand the alignments of early BRT lines. Anyway, is there a chance you could do Boston, Mass. next? There's a lot to unpack from such a small system (small vis-a-vis NYC).
Most of the subway lines in Brooklyn began as steam railroads that were electrified with trolley wire, then elevated, put into cuts, or on embankments. The outer end of the Canarsie line remained on the ground.
It's also interesting to see why old Hagstrom maps would say things like Culver Line with no explanation.
This was amazing! I would love a narrated version related to the decisions of making these extensions.
Nice video, if u wanna make a short video in this similar format. The toronto subway is really short
Toronto loves debating transit but hates building it. Seems like they’re finally getting their act together but Eglington Crosstown will have a diminished service quality to the existing Subway and it remains to be seen if the Ontario Line gets built. The regional rail’s ambitious transformation is just gonna overload the existing inadequate system even more.
@@eriklakeland3857 yeah, the Eglington crosstown has been under construction for soooooo damn long. And now metrolinx is making an LRT on Finch, and i highly doubt this'll be completed on time
AMAZING WORK. You really have to keep going in that.
NYC subway system: * is being extended *
Me: "How the hell can it be so huge??"
Also me: "What the hell? The year is 1916? It was this big over 100 years ago??"
In Finland we have only one subway system and it's only 35 km long
Wow, this video was so amazing! I never knew there was this much of an evolution! 💯💯💯
As someone from NYC and had a fond love for NYC Subway, It really bothers me that some of the lines especially 3rd Ave in The Bronx in the 1970s were shut down for replacement that never came and was only agreed upon with a bunch of future line drawn on map with broke city in charge of the project. In the end that El was torn down for selfish, racist, and fear-mongering reasons. "Oh the el offers too many hiding places for people to sell drugs and commit crime." but no other el in city had this problem too? Yeah I call bullshit. That was move to hurt the community not protect it. Now all we got on 3rd Ave is lousy BRT with a fancy paint job and dedicated lane everyone parks on.
Now why’d you spilled
Select Bus Service is mini BRT. Look up the bus system in Bogota Columbia or in Curitiba Brazil. Now THAT’S gold standard. Almost a surface subway. But the NIMBY’s of NYC would never allow it to happen. Just like the shutdown the extension of the Astoria line to LaGuardia Airport. It’s only two damn miles away from the Astoria terminal!!!!
Typical Democrat-controlled cities.
Hey I drive that bx15 bus and it's a great service.
@@rasheedwhite4647 that is 100% true the Bx15 buses is very good service what. People are saying is that is not the same with out the 8 Rd Avenue elevated line anymore. I still don't understand why did they took the BX 55 buses and made the BX 15 that didn't make sense
This channel is amazing, please do Chicago next :)
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There's an error here. The Brooklyn 5th Ave elevated, when it moved south, switched to 3rd Ave. On this map, it's shown as 4th, overlapping with the 4th Ave subway.
these metro things are satisfying, the lines expand and more new lines come, it’s just weirdly satisfying somehow
I couldn’t help to notice you forgot Staten Island
Staten Island does not have a subway line. The SIR is independently operated, though it is controlled by the MTA and has been since 1973.
If it were to include Staten Island it would need to include MetroNorth, PATH, and LIRR too
@@adamaviation6236 I would be ok with that. It’s one of my favorite lines in TSW
@@adamaviation6236 For Staten Island Railway to be added, the MTA would need to reopen and rebuild the St. George's Tunnel.
And the AirTrain, S.I. Ferry and Roosevelt Island Tram?
Great animation. I can’t stop watching this,It’s so good.Keep up the good work and also I would love to see the PATH next and I live in NYC
Can you also make an animation of the service getting slower and slower?
Hahahahaha, what even is a "z" train amiright?
@@ronnyshama right like I never see it but I live on the A line
@@brandon_astris same i live on the peninsula
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gotta love how they expanded to the Bronx before expanding to queens
0:59 btw rockaway Av is closer to broadway junction but I understand this was like the 2nd animation you’ve ever made here
THIS CHANNEL IS YET TO GROW!
As a lover of both maps and urban rail transit, this was an amazing video to watch. I am looking forward to watching your other videos. Could you make one about Chicago's L trains?
This is amazing! Hope to see Hong Kong’s MTR here one day.
great video of the expansion of the nyc subway before the war so many lines and branches opened there was some decline after the war but thankfully most lines were kept and some extensions happened afterwards
the reason why many lines were closed was because the trains were super rickety, and had wooden cars.
It feels so good that first subway was start by my area. Manhattan
Amazing work! I had to watch it multiple times to catch all the detail.
So annoyed that in the 1900s I could get from downtown Brooklyn to Middle Village
@Breanna Northrup you were still able to during rush hours up until about 2010 or so when the M ran from Middle Village to Bay Parkway via the R and J lines through Manhattan.
When they ended the V line and combined it with the M, that was the end of that.
This video was an excellent show of the history of the rapid transit system in living color.
ahhhhhh... corona line 4:02
That explains how the pandemic started now...
@@liam-man7265 That's hilarious..and in the "Corona Yards" there by Willets Pt. Blvd/CitiField Station!! Lol!!
Thank you, I’ve been looking for this!
Lower West Side this whole time: am I a joke to you ?
Awesome work! LOVE IT.
"IRT Corona Line (later Flushing Line)"
*it all makes sense now*
Note how the map shows that Astoria and Flushing lines were operated jointly by IRT and BMT in 1930 or so. I recall seeing old station entrance signs offering service to Astoria, Corona, and Flushing.
Great vid. I watched at 0.5 speed and turned the volume down so I could get all the info
The monorail from Jamaica station to Kennedy (and eventually to Laguardia too) should be included in the system, IMHO.
Not really the same system, and that's the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
ROOSEVELT ISLAND is cable tramway of elevated nature over water. AIR TRAIN is airport elevated train to subways and Long Island Railways.
These not part of subway system
STATEN ISLAND was part of Baltimore & Ohio heavy rail, multi state system. From earliest dats it did serve many stations by local trains. Taken over by city after ConRail received permission to abandon. (Though it was electrified to subways BMT Division B) standards in teens, and in 20s proposed Tunnel or Bridge was to include tracks to link to either what today is R line ir former 3rd ave elevated line.
Amazingly enough only in last 20 years has it been added to subway maps. It has only 1 underground station and is mostly elevated or open below ground cuts. ONLY 1 of 3 routes still carry passegers, only bare ground of North Shore & South Beach exists.
Omg this needs to be in the Transit Museum so awesome 🤩