Okay, I want you to close your eyes for a second.
Unless you're driving. Right, yeah. Definitely
do not close your eyes if you are behind the
wheel. But if you are somewhere safe, just visualize
this. You are standing on a subway platform in
New York City. Very specific vibe. Exactly. Let's
say you're in Brooklyn. The air is cool, maybe
a little damp. You've got that distinct smell
of steel dust and ozone. The brakes. That smell
is the brakes. Yeah, that metallic kind of friction
smell. Yeah. And you look at the walls and there's
that very specific clinical white rectangular
tile. Classic 1930s institutional chic, I like
to call it. With the colored bands near the ceiling.
Right, maybe a deep maroon or a sharp cobalt
blue, depending on the station. It feels very
heavy down there, very permanent. You feel like
a bunker. So you get on the train, the door slides
shut with that aggressive thud, and you are hurtling
through the dark, deep underground. The ride
is fast. The ton lights blur by. You are deep
in the belly of the city. And you are almost
certainly riding the A train. The famous A train.
It has a real personality, doesn't it? I mean,
it's the longest run in the system. And when
it's in Brooklyn, it moves with a very serious
sense of purpose. It really does. It's flying
under Fulton Street. Yeah. But then 20, maybe
30 minutes later, something shifts. The pitch
of the engine changes. Yeah. It starts to whine
a bit more. The train starts to climb. And the
darkness outside the window starts to turn gray.
and then bright it bursts out suddenly you burst
out of the tunnel blinding sunlight hits those
dusty scratched windows and you are rattling
along on an elevated track that feels uh Well,
let's be honest, it feels fragile. It feels ancient
compared to the tunnel. Totally. The steel looks
different. The architecture is completely different.
You're suddenly looking into people's second
story apartment windows. It is a really jarring
moment for a lot of writers because you have
essentially just traveled through time. Right.
You went from a Great Depression era tunnel built
with federal might and massive amounts of concrete
to a pre -World War I elevated structure built
by a private company. And that all happens in
the span of about 30 seconds. And that right
there is why we are here today. We are doing
a deep dive into the IND Fulton Street line.
A fascinating piece of infrastructure. And look,
I know what you are probably thinking out there.
It's just a subway line. It's the A and the C.
We ride it to work. But. Looking at the stack
of documents we have here today. We have a lot
of documents. We really do. We've got old engineering
reports, Transit Commission maps from the 20s,
construction photos from the 30s. Based on all
of this, this isn't just a train. This is a physical
timeline of the 20th century. I would argue it's
the most Frankenstein line in the entire New
York City system. Frankenstein is the perfect
word for it. It really is. It is a patchwork
of dreams, dynamite political feuds, global wars,
and some honestly... baffling engineering compromises.
It starts in the optimism of the Roaring Twenties,
gets bogged down in the Depression, pauses for
World War II, and ends up in the suburban sprawl
of Queens. Which was never the original plan.
Exactly. And it is the ghost of a future that
never happened. We're going to get into the second
system, which was this massive plan to turn Queens
into a transit paradise that, well, didn't quite
pan out. Not at all. So stick with us because
by the end of this deep dive, you are never going
to look at the A train the same way again. Our
mission is to trace this route from the bottom
of the East River all the way to the rooftops
of Ozone Park. So let's start with the geography
just so everyone is oriented. Yeah, lay it out
for us. We are talking about the route that runs
from the Cranberry Street tunnel that is deep
under the East River connecting lower Manhattan
to Brooklyn. Right near Brooklyn Heights. Correct.
It runs through central Brooklyn, mostly under
Fulton Street, swinging out into East New York,
and then terminating in Ozone Park, Queens. Okay,
so let's unpack the anatomy of this beast. Yeah.
Because looking at these schematics, it is not
just one long, simple tube, is it? Far from it.
It is a very specific setup designed for a very
specific kind of efficiency. Yes. The main trunk
of the line, primarily under Fulton Street, Pitkin
Avenue, and Liberty Avenue, is a four -track
system. Now, for those who aren't transit engineers,
why is four tracks the magic number? Why not
two? Why not just build a really wide tunnel
with six? Well, six is usually overkill and too
expensive, but two is a massive bottleneck. It
comes down to redundancy and speed. If you only
have two tracks, one going north, one going south,
every train has to stop at every station. Like
the L train. Exactly like the L. Or worse, if
a train breaks down the entire line is dead,
you are stuck because there is no way around
it. Which, as anyone who rides the subway knows,
is a special kind of hell. being stuck behind
a sick passenger or a broken signal on a two
-track line. Precisely. But a four -track system
allows you to separate the service. You have
two local tracks on the outside stopping everywhere
to pick up the volume of passengers, and then
you have two express tracks in the middle bypassing
the smaller stops carrying people long distances
very quickly. It separates the commuter from
the traveler, in a sense. That is a good way
to put it. It allows for high capacity without
sacrificing velocity. Which gives us the dynamic
duo of this line, the A and the C. Correct. The
C is your local workhorse. The slow one. Well,
it has to be. It stops everywhere in Brooklyn,
picking up the volume. It is the train for the
person going from, say, Clinton, Washington to
J Street. Right. Just hopping a few neighborhoods
over. Meanwhile, the A is the express powerhouse.
In Brooklyn, the A is incredibly fast because
the stops are spaced widely apart. It is designed
to get you from the deep burrows into Manhattan
as fast as physically possible. But, and here's
where it gets super interesting looking at the
track maps. The A changes its identity the moment
it hits Queens. It does. It goes from being this
aggressive type A express train to a local. It
does, and this is a direct result of the physical
infrastructure. Once the A hits that elevated
structure in Queens, the four tracks disappear.
Right, because the elevated structure isn't wide
enough. Exactly. It becomes a two -track or three
-track elevated line depending on the segment.
There is no room for express service in the same
way. So the A makes every single stop in Queens.
It becomes a sleepy local train. And the C train,
what happens to the C? The C never even makes
it to Queens. It terminates at the border at
Euclid Avenue. So the architecture literally
dictates the service pattern. Yeah. You physically
cannot run four tracks of service in Queens because
the concrete and steel structure does not exist
to support it. Exactly. So if you are riding
the A from 207th Street in Manhattan all the
way to Far Rockaway, you are experiencing three
or four different types of railroad in one seat.
You are on a local in Manhattan and express in
Brooklyn, a local in Queens, then crossing a
bay on a trestle. It is the ultimate tour of
the system's varying standards. But before we
get to Queens in that elevated section, we have
to talk about the underground section in Brooklyn.
Because there are some stations here that make
absolutely no sense unless you understand the
engineering constraints of the 1920s. I know
exactly where you're going with this. We need
to talk about No Strand Avenue. No Strand Avenue
is a headache. An engineering headache, that
is. It is a split -level station. Usually in
New York, you stand on a platform and the express
is on one side of you and the local is on the
other. You just... Walk across it is seamless
cross -platform transfer, right? But at no strand
the express tracks are upstairs and the local
tracks are downstairs It feels like a dungeon
down there on the lower level. Why would they
do that? Do they just want to confuse people?
It wasn't an aesthetic choice. I promise you
it was pure geometry You have to remember they
were building this line directly under Fulton
Street, which is a major commercial artery, right?
but it isn't infinitely wide. To build a standard
four -track station with two island platforms,
you need a tunnel box that is about 100 to 120
feet wide. OK. Now, if the street above is only
80 feet wide from building line to building line,
you have a massive problem. Because if you dig
a 120 -foot hole under an 80 -foot street, you
are digging into the basements of all those shops
and brownstones. Or worse, you are undermining
their foundations and causing the buildings to
collapse into the cut. That would be bad. Very
bad. So the engineers in the late 20s did the
only thing they could do. They stacked the tracks.
They put the express on top of the local. Yes.
To keep the tunnel narrow enough to fit between
the building lines of Fulton Street? It's a literal
tight squeeze. They basically folded the subway
in half to make it fit. It saved the buildings
on Fulton Street, but it created that unique,
slightly claustrophobic split level station we
have today. It is a compromise set in concrete.
And then literally just a few stops later, you
have the exact opposite problem. You have Hoyt
-Shermerhorn. A massive complex. This station
is huge. It feels like an airport hangar buried
underground. The ceilings are high. The station
is incredibly wide. Hoyt -Shermerhorn is a fascinating
case of what we call overbuilding. It is a six
-track station. Six tracks. Six. You have the
Fulton Street trains, the A and C, and then you
have the Crosstown trains, the G, running perpendicular
but sharing the same level. But if you stand
on that platform right now and look across the
tracks, you see nothing. You see dead platforms.
You see these wide... dusty platforms that are
completely dark. No passengers, no signs. Maybe
a stray rat or two. It is incredibly creepy.
It is. I've looked at them while waiting for
the UA. A late at night. It looks like a movie
set for a post -apocalyptic film. It often is
used for that actually. Hoyt Schirmerhorn is
a favorite for film crews because they can use
those abandoned platforms without stopping regular
service. Michael Jackson filmed the bad music
video there. Really? I didn't know that. But
those platforms, they tell a story of a massive
failure, don't they? They do. Those are the platforms
for the Court Street shuttle. Let's unpack the
Court Street saga, because this is the go station
of the line. What was the plan here based on
the documents? The planners in the 20s thought
they needed a dedicated local train to terminate
in downtown Brooklyn. They looked at the projected
numbers and believed that there would be so much
demand for a local service that just went from
residential Brooklyn neighborhoods to the downtown
Civic Center. Meaning City Hall, the courts,
the business district there. Exactly. So they
built a spur line. So a train would peel off
from the main line and go to this dead -end station
called Court Street. Yes. It opened in 1936 along
with the rest of the main line. How did it do?
Absolute silence. Nobody used it. Why not though?
Downtown Brooklyn was and is incredibly busy.
It was a logistical failure of human behavior.
Court Street Station was built geographically
very close to the Hoyt -Shermerhorn and J Street
stations. Oh, I see. If you were a commuter,
why would you get off your train, wait for a
special shuttle to take you to a station that
is only a three -block walk from where you already
are? You wouldn't. You would just walk the three
blocks. Plus, the transfer itself at Hoyt -Shermerhorn
was clumsy. People hate transferring. So they
spent millions of dollars. They built an entire
station. Tunnels tracks signaling for absolutely
nothing. Essentially, yes. Ridership was abysmal
from day one. It bled money for 10 years. Finally,
the Board of Transportation looked at the numbers
and killed it in 1946. But they didn't fill it
in with concrete. Yeah. They didn't demolish
it to save money on upkeep. No, they just locked
the doors. And this is the beautiful irony of
the Fulton Street line. The biggest failure of
the line became its greatest cultural asset today.
because that abandoned station Court Street is
now the New York Transit Museum. Exactly. I love
that place. If you are listening to this and
you haven't been, you have to go. The entrance
is literally just a subway entrance on a sidewalk
in Brooklyn. You go down the stairs and you are
in a 1936 station frozen in time. And if you
visit the museum, you are physically walking
through the ghost of the Fulton Street line.
The vintage cars they keep there, the ones with
the wicker seats and the ceiling fans, they're
sitting on the actual tracks that were built
for that failed shuttle. The failure is what
preserved the history. That's amazing. OK, so
we have a tight squeeze at Nostrand, the massive
ghost town at Hoyt. Now let's move back to the
construction itself. Because looking at these
reports from 1929, the actual act of building
this thing sounds like a nightmare. Nightmare
is the exact right word. You really have to remember
the historical context here. Groundbreaking for
the line was April 16th, 1929. 1929, the year
everything changed. The stock market crash happened
six months later. So this line was built almost
entirely during the Great Depression. The city
was broke. The country was broke. People were
desperate for work. So labor was incredibly cheap,
but money for machines was tight. Labor was certainly
available, yes, but the conditions described
in the reports, the documents detail a hand shovel
method for large sections of the line. A hand
shovel method for a subway tunnel? Yes. We are
talking about moving millions of tons of earth.
We're talking about digging a trench 40 feet
deep and 100 feet wide down a major avenue. Why
weren't they using steam shovels? They had machines
in the 30s. They had them, but they couldn't
use them. The subsurface of Fulton Street was
a spaghetti bowl of utilities. A spaghetti bowl.
Imagine a century of infrastructure buried haphazardly
under the dirt. Gas mains, water lines, fragile
vitrified clay sewer pipes, early telephone ducts,
telegraph wires, pneumatic tubes. This is a mess.
It was so dense and so poorly mapped that if
you stuck a giant steam shovel bucket into the
ground, you would blindly sever the nervous system
of Brooklyn. And probably blow up a city block
if you hit a high pressure gas main. Precisely.
The gas mains were the biggest danger. One spark
from a steel shovel hitting a subterranean rock
combined with a leaking gas main, you have a
catastrophe. So they mandated that they had to
dig it by hand. I want to picture this. Thousands
of men. Thousands of men down in the dirt. pickaxes,
shovels, wheelbarrows. They would expose the
pikes by hand, carefully hang them from the temporary
timber decking above with chains, and then dig
around them. It was surgical excavation on a
massive scale. Surgical and incredibly dangerous.
That gives a whole new meaning to the word infrastructure.
It wasn't just pouring concrete. It was urban
archaeology. They were unearthing the city's
old guts while trying to build a brand new organ
underneath. And they had to be incredibly patient.
There is a detail in the Board of Transportation
specifications that really struck me when reviewing
the sources. Oh, I saw that in the notes. The
four -month rule. Yes, the soil settlement clause.
After they built the concrete tunnel box down
in the trench and backfilled the dirt on top
of it to bring the street level back up, they
weren't allowed to pave the street immediately.
Why not just throw some asphalt down and get
the cars back on the road? Gravity. They had
to wait four months. They left Fulton Street
a major commercial thoroughfare as a dirt road
for four solid months just to let the rain and
gravity naturally compress the soil. Because
if they didn't... If they paved it immediately,
the road would have buckled and cracked within
weeks as the hidden air pockets settled out and
the dirt compacted under the weight of traffic.
So imagine that. Fulton Street just being a mud
pit for a third of a year. The business owners
must have absolutely loved that. Oh, they hated
it. The documents show there were lawsuits. Constant
complaints businesses went under. The construction
of the subway decimated the street life above
it for years. But that was the price of progress.
The city was betting that the subway would bring
more value in the long run than the disruption
cost in the short run. And eventually it did.
Opening day finally comes. April 9th, 1936. The
line opens from J Street. to Rockaway Avenue.
It was a huge moment for Brooklyn. A quiet, fast
subway replacing the noisy, dark, elevated train
that used to run above the street. Right, because
before the subway, there was an actual L train
on Fulton Street, too. Yes, the old Fulton Street
elevated, and it was universally despised by
the 1930s. It was incredibly loud. It blocked
the sun from the storefronts. It dripped oil
and grease onto pedestrians. Taking it down and
putting the train underground was seen as civilizing
the neighborhood. It was a massive civic upgrade.
But then history intervenes again. We get to
what I call the interrupted line phase in the
documents. The war. World War II. Right. So construction
is moving east. They are pouring concrete past
Rockaway Avenue. They are heading toward East
New York. It is 1941. And then Pearl Harbor happens.
December 1941. Suddenly building a subway in
Brooklyn is not a national priority. The priority
is tanks, battleships, and bombers. What specifically
stopped the subway, though? Was it just a lack
of municipal funds? Or was it manpower since
everyone was drafted? It was actually materials,
specifically copper and steel. A subway needs
miles and miles of copper for the third rail
for the signaling relays for the power substations.
It needs thousands of tons of steel for the tracks
and the reinforcement bars inside the concrete.
And the Federal War Production Board stepped
in and said no. They said, we need that copper
for bullet casings and communication wire. We
need that steel for Liberty ships and Sherman
tanks. You could not buy copper in 1942 for a
civilian project. It was all strictly rationed
for the war effort. So the city just stopped?
Cold stop. December 1942, the Board of Transportation
literally walked away from the active construction
sites. What happened to the tunnels they had
already dug? They just sat there in the dark.
There were stations like Broadway East New York,
which is what we now call Broadway Junction,
that were physically finished. Finished like
you could walk into them. Yes. The tile was on
the wall. The concrete stairs were poured. The
wooden ticket booths were built. But there were
no signals and no steel tracks. Just dark, empty
concrete shells echoing under the street. That
is incredibly eerie. It is a ghost tunnel scenario.
Imagine being a kid living in East New York in
1943 knowing there is a massive beautifully tiled
cavern right under your street that goes absolutely
nowhere. It wasn't until the war ended and the
global supply chains normalized that they could
resume work. And even then it took quite a while
to spin the massive gears of construction back
up. The documents show the extension to Broadway
Junction didn't open until late 1946. And the
push to Euclid Avenue took until 1948. And you
can actually see the difference, right? If you
look closely at the architecture of the stations.
Oh, absolutely. This is one of my favorite details
to look out for. If you get off at a station
like Ralph Avenue or Rockaway Avenue, which were
built in the mid -30s, the tiles are a certain
style. The name tablets are very intricate. But
if you go out to Euclid Avenue or Shepherd Avenue,
which were built post -war, the feel is completely
different. How so? What changed in 10 years?
It is the lighting and the finish. The 1936 stations
were designed for incandescent bulbs. They produce
a softer, yellower light. There are more shadows.
The 1948 stations introduced fluorescent lighting.
The harsh, buzzing, blue -white light of the
future. Exactly. The Atomic Age aesthetic. It
was brighter, it was cleaner, and it felt much
more modern for 1948. They wanted to banish the
shadows of the Depression and the war. So as
you ride the line from downtown Brooklyn out
to East New York, You are literally riding from
the incandescent 30s into the fluorescent late
40s. OK, so we finally reach Euclid Avenue. We
are at the physical edge of the city, basically.
We are right near the Queens border. But we still
need to get the train to Ozone Park. And this
is where the Frankenstein surgery happens. The
takeover. This is one of the most impressive
feats of engineering on the entire line and also,
frankly, the most bizarre. Set the scene for
us based on the historical record. You have a
brand new concrete tunnel deep underground at
Euclid and you have an old rickety elevated train
line running high above Liberty Avenue in Queens.
The Liberty Avenue L. It was originally built
by the BMT, the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit Corporation,
which was the private competitor to the city
owned IND system back in 1915. So it was already
40 years old by the time the subway tunnel reached
it. Yes, it was part of the dual contracts expansion
era. It was serving Ozone Park for decades before
the underground subway even arrived at the border.
So the IND decides we are not going to spend
millions to dig a tunnel to Ozone Park. We're
just going to steal the BMT's elevated track.
Recapture was the polite legal term, but yes,
the city had unified the subway system in 1940,
buying out all the private companies. So they
own the L now anyway. They wanted to connect
their new deep subway tunnel to these old elevated
tracks to create one long continuous line. But
the problem is the L was already running. Thousands
of people in Queens used it every single day
to commute. You cannot just shut it down for
six months to build a massive concrete ramp.
Exactly. You have to keep the city moving. So
how do you connect a deep tunnel to a sky -high
bridge without stopping the trains? It sounds
like open -heart surgery on a living patient.
It really was. They built everything around the
active line first. They built the ramp, the incline
coming up from the tunnel at Grant Avenue. They
built the entirely new station at Grant Avenue,
which sits right at the portal where the train
comes out of the ground. And then they planned
what they called The Cutover. The Cutover. It
sounds like a 1950s heist movie. It was a military
-style operation. April 1956. They chose a single
weekend. On a Friday, the old elevated trains
were running to their old terminus in Brooklyn.
Crews went in with oxy acetylene torches and
massive cranes. They physically severed the steel
tracks of the old L. They just cut them in half.
Cut them in half, slewed them over, literally
bent the steel structures to align with the new
ramp coming up from the ground and connected
the high voltage power. In one single weekend.
Three days. By Monday morning, April 29th, the
A train came roaring out of the underground tunnel.
up the new ramp and smoothly onto the old elevated
structure. That is wild. Imagine the absolute
confusion for the commuters that Monday. We go
underground now. It changed the commute forever.
Suddenly you had a one seat ride from Ozone Park,
Queens, all the way to Midtown Manhattan, no
more transferring to a slow elevated train in
Brooklyn and then another train to cross the
river. It integrated Queens into the economic
heart of the city in a way it never had been
before. But there is a catch here, right? The
BMT -L was built in 1915. Was it actually strong
enough? I mean, IND subway cars, the A train,
they are heavy steel beasts. They're built like
tanks. Old elevated trains from the teens were
mostly wooden and very light. That is the lucky
break of history right there. In 1915, for reasons
that transit historians still debate, Maybe it
was incredible foresight. Maybe it was just accidental
overengineering. The BMT built that specific
section of the Liberty Avenue L to heavy subway
standards. What does that mean, practically speaking?
It means the steel girders were twice as thick
as they strictly needed to be for the light wooden
trains of the era. The concrete foundations for
the pillars went much deeper into the ground.
So it was accidentally. future -proofed. Or intentionally.
Yeah. The BMT leadership might have suspected
that one day heavy steel trains would need to
run out there. Because of that specific decision
made in 1915, the IND engineers in 1956 could
just drive their massive trains right onto it.
If that steel had been lighter, the A train could
not run there today. The city would have had
to tear it down and rebuild the entire structure.
Which they probably wouldn't have had the money
to do. Incredible. So we have the line as we
know it today. A tunnel from the 30s forcefully
connected to an L from the teens. But now, based
on these planning documents, we have to talk
about the line we don't know. The ghost map.
The second system. This is the part of the deep
dive that makes transit nerds weep. The IND Fulton
Street line was never supposed to end at Ozone
Park. It was never supposed to just be a feeder
line hooking up to an old L. It was supposed
to be the launch pad for a massive futuristic
expansion deep into Queens. We're talking about
the ambitious second system plans of 1929 and
1939. This is a comprehensive plan to cover the
transit deserts of Queens and subways. And when
we say evidence in the documents, we mean stuff
you can physically see today while riding the
train. Tell us about the bell mounts. Okay. This
is a bit of a treasure hunt for the listeners.
Next time you are on the A train leaving Broadway
Junction heading east toward Euclid Avenue, look
out the right -hand window into the tunnel. Just
as the train leaves the station and enters the
dark, watch the concrete wall. What exactly am
I looking for? You will see the tunnel wall suddenly
flare out. It curves away into the darkness,
creating a wide empty cavern, and then a few
seconds later it curves back in. Like the shape
of a bell opening up. Exactly. It's called a
bell mouth. That is a structural provision for
a future turnout. The original engineers built
the tunnel wall that way so that in the future
they could easily bore a new tunnel branching
off without having to dynamite the walls and
disrupt service on the main line. They were leaving
a door open for the future. Where was that specific
branch supposed to go? That one was supposed
to recapture the Jamaica line. It would have
created a massive loop service through Queens
connecting different residential neighborhoods
that are currently totally isolated from each
other. And then there's Euclid Avenue. We mentioned
earlier that the C train terminates there. Yeah.
But the physical tracks keep going. Yes. If you
stand at the very end of the platform at Euclid
and look straight into the tunnel, you see four
tracks heading into the dark. The outer two tracks
go up the ramp to the elevated line. We just
talked about heading to Lefferts Boulevard and
the Rockaways But the center two tracks the express
tracks they continue straight and then they just
hit a brick wall They go straight under Pitkin
Avenue for a few blocks, essentially running
under the neighborhood, and then they just end
in concrete bumpers. They are used as storage
tracks now to park out of service trains. But
originally they were pointing like a loaded arrow
toward Cambria Heights. Cambria Heights. That
is way out there. That is near the Nassau County
border. It is deep Queens. The 1939 transit plan
envisioned extending the subway along Pitkin
Avenue all the way to Cross Bay Boulevard and
then running along Linden Boulevard straight
to Cambria Heights. We are talking about an area
that is a massive transit desert today. If you
live in Cabria Heights right now, you are taking
a bus to another bus just to get to a train.
It is easily an hour and a half commute to Manhattan.
Under the second system, it would have been a
fast one -seat ride to Wall Street, and the plans
were incredibly detailed. They didn't just draw
a theoretical line on a map. They designed complex
flying junctions at Cross Bay Boulevard. Pause
on flying junction for a second. What does that
mean technically compared to a regular track
intersection? In a normal flat junction, if a
train wants to turn left to go onto a branch
line, it has to physically cross over the oncoming
tracks in the opposite direction. It is exactly
like a car turning left at a busy intersection
that blocks all oncoming traffic. You have to
wait for a gap. Which causes massive delays.
because one late train messes up the timing for
everything else. Right, cascading delays. A flying
junction, however, is like a modern highway interchange.
The tracks physically ramp up and fly over or
dive under the opposing tracks through separate
tunnels so that trains can merge and diverge
without ever stopping or waiting for oncoming
traffic. It allows for incredibly high speed,
high frequency service. So they weren't just
planning a simple subway extension. They were
planning a super highway for trains. They were
planning for a future where Queens was going
to be as dense and bustling as Manhattan. Yes.
They were planning for a metropolis that never
quite materialized in that way. And the plan
died. Why did it die? Why didn't we get the Super
A train to Cabria Heights? Money politics and
timing. As we discussed, the war completely drained
the public coffers. And then after the war, the
entire philosophy of American city planning changed
fundamentally. The rise of the personal automobile.
and specifically the rise of Robert Mersus. The
power breaker himself. He shifted the city's
focus entirely to highways and bridges. Building
the Van Wick Expressway took absolute priority
over extending the subway. The public money that
could have built the Cambria Heights line went
into pouring asphalt for cars. The second system
remained a paper dream. And those express tracks
at Euclid are just sitting there waiting? Waiting
for a train that will likely never come. They
are essentially the longest, most expensive storage
closet in New York. So let's flash forward. We
are in the present day 2026. The line is 90 years
old. It is a survivor, but it is also creaking
under the weight of its own age. What is happening
now based on the recent documentation? Is it
just rotting away or is there hope for modernization?
Modernization is finally happening and the big
story, the expensive story, is the signals. The
traffic lights of the subway system. For almost
90 years, this line ran on what is called fixed
block signaling. Imagine the physical track is
divided into invisible zones or blocks. If a
train is in zone A, the signal light in zone
B turns red. No one can enter. It is safe, but
it is incredibly inefficient. You have to keep
huge physical gaps between trains to ensure they
don't rear end each other. And if a physical
signal breaks, which happens all the time with
1930s technology down in a damn tunnel, the whole
line stops. We've all heard the conductor say
on the loudspeaker, we are being held by a signal
trouble ahead. Exactly. That usually means a
literal piece of copper from 1936 is finally
corroded. But recently, in December 2025, the
MTA awarded a massive contract. One point three
billion to a company called LK Comstock to install
CBTC on the Fulton Street line. CBTC. Communications
-based train control. Explain that to a five
-year -old. Well, explain it to me. Okay. Instead
of fixed rigid zones on the track, the train
itself tells a central computer exactly where
it is down to the inch. It uses radio transponders.
The computer then calculates the train's speed
and braking distance and creates a moving bubble
of safety around the train. As the train moves,
the bubble moves with it. So the train behind
it doesn't have to wait for a fixed zone to clear.
It can get much closer as long as it stays outside
that moving digital bubble. Exactly. This allows
trains to run much closer together safely. It
drastically increases the capacity of the line.
You can run more trains per hour through the
same tunnel. So fewer delays, less crowding on
the platforms. That is the goal. It is the standard
for modern rapid transit worldwide. London has
it. Paris has it. New York is finally catching
up on the Fulton Street line. But the really
interesting thing in these documents is where
the money came from to pay for this billion dollar
upgrade. Do tell. The documents mention a very
specific funding source. The reports explicitly
state this is funded by congestion pricing. Ah,
the toll. The controversial fee for driving into
Manhattan below 16th Street. However you feel
about the toll, the mechanics of it are a direct
wealth transfer. The money paid by drivers and
their personal cars to enter the central business
district is literally paying for the new digital
signals under Fulton Street in Brooklyn. That
is a powerful historical connection. The car
is finally paying for the train. It is almost
poetic justice for the Robert Moses era. It is
a complete reversal of the 1950s logic where
highway money starved the subway. Finally, the
transit system is getting the capital. But unfortunately,
it is not all good news. We also have to talk
about the stations themselves. The Enhanced Station
Initiative. I was reading about this in the 2015
reports. This was the grand plan a few years
ago. The state wanted to make the stations look
and feel modern. They promised Wi -Fi USB charging
ports at the benches, new artwork, better lighting,
digital countdown screens. Stations like Clinton,
Washington and Kingston Throop on the Fulton
line were on the priority list for a major structural
overhaul. And did it happen? Did we get the USB
ports in Ben Stovey? Budget cuts. The costs ballooned
way beyond projections. In 2018, they quietly
dropped those specific stations from the program.
They got pushed to the next capital plan cycle.
It is the exact same old story, isn't it? From
1929 to 2026. We have a great plan. Oh, wait,
we ran out of money. We will do it later. It
is the recurring theme of the Fulton Street line.
It is a line of deferred dreams. It was supposed
to be part of a massive second system. Deferred.
It was supposed to open fully in 1942. Deferred
by war. The stations were supposed to be completely
renovated in the 2010s. Deferred by budget. And
yet it moves over 200 ,000 people a day. every
single day. It works. It's not always pretty.
It's ugly in places. It's loud. It's a Frankenstein
patchwork of different eras and technologies.
But it is the absolute spine of Brooklyn. It
connects the Bed Study brownstones, the East
New York housing projects, the Liberty Avenue
roti shops and the international travelers heading
to JFK. It is the great equalizer of the city.
You see absolutely everyone on the A train. So
what is the ultimate takeaway here? When we look
at this line with all its history? What are we
really seeing as a society? I think we are seeing
the incredible resilience of imperfect systems.
The Fulton Street line isn't the perfect symmetrical
subway the planners drew on paper in 1929. It
doesn't go to Cambria Heights. It doesn't have
the grand flying junctions. But it adapted to
reality. It forcefully connected to the old L.
It survived the fiscal crises of the 70s. It
is surviving the modern budget cuts today. It
is a scrapper. It is a survivor. It is a scrapper.
And for the everyday writer, my advice is to
just look up from your phone sometimes. And look
out the window. Look for the bell mouths. Yes.
Look for the flared concrete tunnels near Broadway
Junction. Look for the dead silent platforms
at Hoyt Schirmerhorn. Those aren't just weird
construction quirks. They are the physical scars
of the system. They show you exactly where we
tried to go, even if we didn't quite make it.
The ghosts of the city they could have been.
And speaking of the future, I have to wonder.
As climate change gets worse and sea levels rise,
we might be looking at a future where these hand
dug depression era tunnels need another massive
reinvention. Maybe we'll need a third system
just to keep the water out. That is a terrifying
and entirely plausible thought. The infrastructure
is always fighting a battle against nature and
time. Well, I think that is a perfect, somewhat
provocative place to leave it. Next time you
swipe your card or tap your phone and get on
that A train. Remember, you are riding through
a living museum of dreams, dynamite, and compromise.
And hold on tight, because the A -train runs
very fast. That it does. Thanks for listening
to this deep dive. We will see you on the next
one.