by Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region
Look at photos from New York City from the late 1940s, and you may be surprised to see that horse-drawn wagons bearing fruit, junk or milk were still quite common, even as the automobiles also crowded the streets.
Transportation eras do not neatly switch from one to another but slide into one another, with long transitions over many decades. In that transition, different modes influence each other, and often the newer mode seems to copy the older mode it is replacing.
Cars in the early 1900s, even production ones like the Ford Model T, resembled carriages with motors. They sat up high, as if the drivers still have to see over some horses. It took a few decades for Studebakers and Buicks to sink lower to the ground, a more stable and functional arrangement. (Today though, we seem to have gone back to the future with drivers of contemporary SUVs towering over their neighbors, as if they still had horses in front of them.)
Transportation systems are palimpsests, to use a fancy word, showing the traces of what came before to those who know how to look. I had always wondered why there was a PATH station at relatively small Christopher Street in the Village. I learned the other night it was because originally it connected with the Ninth Avenue Elevated, a major line before it was torn down in 1940.
We do practical things with transportation, principally getting from one place to another (and in the process creating places, but that's another story). But much of what is concerned with transportation relates matter of taste and style and status, things that can't be counted or rationalized and may even be nuts.
As I have written previously in the pages, it is irritating to see Amtrak, our intercity rail service, trying its best to imitate the inconveniences of planes, from having overhead luggage racks, to having inflexible and expensive ticketing practices.
Instead of copying airlines, perhaps Amtrak should copy the great train companies of yore, and choose to lose money on certain practices in a calculated way. Those fine meals on china and white tablecloths, served on trains like the 20th Century Limited, were loss-leaders for the railroads, never money-making in their own right.
"To attract passengers away from competing lines, railroads swallowed their food service losses and specialized in gastronomical delicacies," said John Stilgoe in his classic book on trains, Metropolitan Corridor, including regional delicacies such as grouse, salmon, antelope steak, Maine lobster, haddock, oysters and terrapin stew. Pennsylvania Railroad and other train companies, Stilgoe says, were "happy if they earned fifty cents on every dollar expended" because the good food bonded passengers' palates and bellies to the train lines. Passengers did not consciously realize that the great dining experiences at low prices were more than offset by a high price on each train ticket.
Nowadays, congressional critics would like Amtrak to reduce even its limited food of microwaved hamburgers ordered at counters because it loses money. This may not be wise. I can imagine business travel picking up even more on Amtrak if one could dine with a client or unwind from a long business trip with a first-class meal sitting at a handsome table, especially when compared with the grim experience flying has become - even if this meant an increase in the price of train tickets. Amtrak, in other words, could gain an edge on the airline industry by providing a great food-service that the airlines simply do not. (By the way, although airlines have cut back on serving food, why did they ever serve full meals at all? Probably because, in the infancy of the airline age, that's what trains did.)
I could explore this thread of services and modes forever. I'm told that old-fashioned leather bicycle seats resemble, and used to be called, "saddles" because bicycle designers copied horse saddles when bicycles became popular in the 1880s. People "rode" a bicycle just as they "rode" a horse. Early buses resembled the streetcars they replaced.
So where does that leave us? For state and local officials, it means resisting the urge to think about transportation as something that can be reduced to wheels and wings. We humans, being soft, fleshy creatures with a handful of senses, have considerations that go beyond how fast and how far and at what price.
Look at photos from New York City from the late 1940s, and you may be surprised to see that horse-drawn wagons bearing fruit, junk or milk were still quite common, even as the automobiles also crowded the streets.
Transportation eras do not neatly switch from one to another but slide into one another, with long transitions over many decades. In that transition, different modes influence each other, and often the newer mode seems to copy the older mode it is replacing.
Cars in the early 1900s, even production ones like the Ford Model T, resembled carriages with motors. They sat up high, as if the drivers still have to see over some horses. It took a few decades for Studebakers and Buicks to sink lower to the ground, a more stable and functional arrangement. (Today though, we seem to have gone back to the future with drivers of contemporary SUVs towering over their neighbors, as if they still had horses in front of them.)
Transportation systems are palimpsests, to use a fancy word, showing the traces of what came before to those who know how to look. I had always wondered why there was a PATH station at relatively small Christopher Street in the Village. I learned the other night it was because originally it connected with the Ninth Avenue Elevated, a major line before it was torn down in 1940.
We do practical things with transportation, principally getting from one place to another (and in the process creating places, but that's another story). But much of what is concerned with transportation relates matter of taste and style and status, things that can't be counted or rationalized and may even be nuts.
As I have written previously in the pages, it is irritating to see Amtrak, our intercity rail service, trying its best to imitate the inconveniences of planes, from having overhead luggage racks, to having inflexible and expensive ticketing practices.
Instead of copying airlines, perhaps Amtrak should copy the great train companies of yore, and choose to lose money on certain practices in a calculated way. Those fine meals on china and white tablecloths, served on trains like the 20th Century Limited, were loss-leaders for the railroads, never money-making in their own right.
"To attract passengers away from competing lines, railroads swallowed their food service losses and specialized in gastronomical delicacies," said John Stilgoe in his classic book on trains, Metropolitan Corridor, including regional delicacies such as grouse, salmon, antelope steak, Maine lobster, haddock, oysters and terrapin stew. Pennsylvania Railroad and other train companies, Stilgoe says, were "happy if they earned fifty cents on every dollar expended" because the good food bonded passengers' palates and bellies to the train lines. Passengers did not consciously realize that the great dining experiences at low prices were more than offset by a high price on each train ticket.
Nowadays, congressional critics would like Amtrak to reduce even its limited food of microwaved hamburgers ordered at counters because it loses money. This may not be wise. I can imagine business travel picking up even more on Amtrak if one could dine with a client or unwind from a long business trip with a first-class meal sitting at a handsome table, especially when compared with the grim experience flying has become - even if this meant an increase in the price of train tickets. Amtrak, in other words, could gain an edge on the airline industry by providing a great food-service that the airlines simply do not. (By the way, although airlines have cut back on serving food, why did they ever serve full meals at all? Probably because, in the infancy of the airline age, that's what trains did.)
I could explore this thread of services and modes forever. I'm told that old-fashioned leather bicycle seats resemble, and used to be called, "saddles" because bicycle designers copied horse saddles when bicycles became popular in the 1880s. People "rode" a bicycle just as they "rode" a horse. Early buses resembled the streetcars they replaced.
So where does that leave us? For state and local officials, it means resisting the urge to think about transportation as something that can be reduced to wheels and wings. We humans, being soft, fleshy creatures with a handful of senses, have considerations that go beyond how fast and how far and at what price.
@RegionalPlan