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Daddy, Tell Me
About the Subway.
I grew up on the south shore of Long Island — about a half-mile walk
from a Long Island Railroad station. As a teenager without a car I could
leave my sheltered suburban Cape Cod style house, and in less than an hour
be smack dab in the center of Manhattan. Not only that, but for just a dollar
extra I could reach just about any corner of New York City’s five bouroughs
by hopping on a subway car.
Today I’m thirty-something. I live in Rochester NY. And I just spent $284
in an effort to help keep my beatup car on the road thru the winter. It’s
not that I haven’t fantasized about trading it in for a bus pass, but that
would mean a 20 minute commute to my office in downtown Rochester would
be replaced by an ice cold bus-stop bench, a gauntlet of tricky bus transfers,
and 40 minutes to an hour later I just might make it to work on-time. And
what if I had a meeting in Greece (the exotically named suburb known
for not much other than strip malls and car dealerships)? Without my car
I’d be looking at a sarcastically “enjoyable” 4 hour round-trip
bus ride.
But I digress. Rochester may be vast and sprawling, but I can’t dump the
blame on the bus company (at least not all of it). Truth is, Rochester used
to share many of the same characteristics of much more densely
populated cities like New York or Chicago. I might not have believed it, but
I’ve seen the old news reel footage of crowded city sidewalks  spilling
over into streets crammed with horse-drawn carriages and electric trolley cars.
After the turn of the 20th century, city planners anticipated Rochester’s
population to exceed two million people. And that prediction might have come
true, had it not been for the invention of the automobile, which would
eventually drive people out to the suburbs — permanently. In the meantime,
to serve the growing urban population and to ease street traffic, the city
proposed the construction of a subway line — arguably the most ambitious
public works project in Rochester’s history to this day. [ Read more about the Rochester Subway ]
Unfortunately, I arrived on Rochester’s doorstep forty years too late. The
last passenger run on the Subway was Saturday, June 30, 1956. The Subway exists
today, in part as I-490. And while I sit in traffic on my way back from a good
shearing by my mechanic, I daydream about a time when I could have boarded a train
under Elmwood Avenue and popped up out of a stairwell in the middle of
downtown Rochester. What if I could even catch a transfer up to Ontario Beach?
Did I just dream that out-loud?
Well yes. Yes I did. And I'm not embarassed to say I think Rochester needs,
and deserves to have it’s Subway back! For all you dreamers out there
(and I know you’re out there because you’re still reading) I designed this
2008 Rochester Subway map. It’s the closest thing we Rochestarians
may ever have to real mass transportation.
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