Remember when you were a kid and you had to answer questions in school like, “What would you do if you were President/Mayor/Governor/Important Person in Charge?” A common response from myself and my classmates usually included some form of making transportation easier. I was a fan of installing zip lines between popular locations, and others supported making all sidewalks into moving walkways and installing escalators on steep hills.
Obviously these are terrible, impractical ideas whose only achievement would be increasing the obesity rate, but it turns out a plan similar to these was seriously considered by a New York City Inventor.
In 1873 Alfred Speer opened a wine shop in downtown Manhattan. A native of Passaic, New Jersey, Speer was used to a bit more peace and quiet than the bustling streets of the Big Apple. The constant mass of people, carts, carriages and horses drove him nuts. Talks of a subway system were already underway, but nothing could happen soon enough for Alfred so he devised an invention of his own. His Railway Sidewalk was an elevated walkway with constant motion.
Raised about 20 feet off the ground, the walkway would move at a constant 12 miles an hour. Pulled by a massive steam-powered cable system, it would stretch the length of Broadway to free up street traffic for local travelers. For a mere five cents a passenger could endlessly loop all day.
But this wasn’t just a means to get from A to B, you could travel in style. Men had access to heated smoking rooms where they could share cigars and discuss the latest baseball bout between the New York Mutuals and the Boston Red Stockings. Ladies had drawing room cars where they can sit and gossip about their secret admiration for Jesse James.
As absurd as it sounds now, this idea was seriously considered by the State of New York. Even after taking it to the legislature and estimating its cost at over $3M ($65M today) it won the support of may congress-folk. Despite the fact that a majority of lawmakers were in favor of installing the system, Governor John Dix flat-out rejected it, even after Speer altered it to meet his recommendations.
Disheartened, Alfred moved back across the river to try to sell his device in his native New Jersey, without luck. He died in 1910 after spending the rest of his live focusing on his wine business.
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Pictures and Information courtesy of: All Ways NY.
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Via: Historical Thursday: Sidewalk in the Sky (There, I fixed it)