There was a RUSH HOUR - always.

The day the subway opened The NY Tribune announced, "the birth of the subway crush"

The day after, "Mobs" was the word the Tribune used to describe the people on the platforms, in the cars, before the ticket boots.

It took the Real Estate Record and Builder's Guide just one week after opening day to conclude that the subway should have been designed to accommodate much larger crowds. 

The subway, designed for a daily ridership of 600,000, was being squeezed 1/3 above its limit a year after opening day.

In 1908 a survey found that 1/3 of all the rides took place between 8 - 10 AM and between 4 - 6 PM.

Expresses were fuller than the locals and there anti social behavior was deemed the strongest. People stayed near the doors. The New York Times of 30 Nov 1909 spoke of cattle cars and sardine cans.

Sexual indignities: The magazine, Outlook decried the sexual indignities inflicted on women. Women were 1/4 of rush hour passengers. In 1909 Julia Longfellow demanded that the last car be reserved for women. This policy was adopted, during morning and afternoon rush hour, by the H & M, the NJ Path's predecessor. Feminists however protested this form of inequality and the H & M canceled the suffragette car.

New York City was a Growing Town

Burgeoning traffic was inevitable, and from the day the city relied on ox carts its mass transit had fallen short. Since the Civil War public transportation had failed to keep up with the public's need to move. The masses spilling through the streets ever overwhelmed the available transport means. In 1860 NY had 14 horse railway companies carrying 38 million riders annually. There were 29 omnibus lines, operating 671 vehicles.

By 1890 NYC had the largest and most comprehensive mass transit system in the world, with more tracks than London, which had  almost three times as many residents.

The 1890 census established that New Yorkers averaged almost 300 mass transit trips every year compared to only about 74 rides for Londoners.

In 1905 the subway carried 3.6 million people per mile of track, twice as many as the elevated lines. It was more crowded before 1914 than ever since.

In 1908 the subway averaged 800,000 riders per day.

The subway did not just pull people off the els and trams it caused them to ride more Between 1904 and 1914 the average rider upped the number of rides he took a year from 274 to 343.

From 1904 to 1914  mass transit patronage rose 60% to 1.75 billion. People did not just switch from the els and trams, they rode more. In those years the number of yearly rides per average rider rose form 274 to 343.

In 1914 the IRT carried  9.5 million people per mile of route.  The Paris metro was carrying 7.2 million,  Berlin, 5.6 million and London, 4.4 million

THE IRONY was that the daily crowding into the subway was the key to relieving the terrible overcrowding of Manhattan. It made urban dispersal possible.  The subway allowed people to live far from their work in the city's business center. New IRT and BRT lines stimulated development of new outlying communities like Jackson Heights

From 1905 - 1920 population of Manhattan above 125th street grew 265% to 323,800

Because of the subway, while NYC's overall population increased 56% from 1910 to 1940, Manhattan's population dropped 19%. from 2,331 million to 1.889 million.

By 1940 the the populations of the Bronx had shot up 309% Queens 218%, and Bklyn 165%. By 1925 almost everyone (91%) lived within 1.2 miles of a subway.

Though the population more than doubled Manhattan's density dropped from 161 per acre in 1910 to 130 per acre.in 1940

But that ordained that every day, for ninety minutes in the morning and ninety minutes in late afternoon the working population would move between the job and home. Thus the crowds of rush hour.

In 1927 The City Club declared: "We do not get a civilized ride for a nickel today. We get instead a chance to hang on. like a chimpanzee, to a flying ring suspended from the roof of the car while we are crushed to the point of indecency by our fellow sufferers.... the trains are like cattle cars."

The City Club appealed to the Board of Estimates to abandon subway expansion plans. They called the subway "a bottomless hole" into which funds were diverted better spent on hospitals parks, schools.

What's New? For most subway riders, and most use it during rush hour, little has changed across a century. Sure, technical improvements have been effected under the train's metal skin, but little has changed from the perspective of the rider's skin. The rush hour challenge of getting on and getting off remains what it was a hundred years ago. That shoving match is about as unchanged as the stairs which subway riders have been running up and down since 1904.

Around three and a half million people presently ride the subway system every day; over 1.2 billion riders pass through the turnstiles per year!

Belmont had said, "The profits are in the straps." The IRT certainly profited from the packed cars. He was probably right, the crowding during rush hours is inevitable. It cannot be helped. But are the miseries and indignities of rush hour unavoidable?

            Can anything be done?

                         Yes!

          See THE FUTURE page.
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