railroads — thoughts

Yesterday, I arrived in Newport, RI for a wedding this weekend. I was planning on flying into Providence, RI and then taking a ferry from Providence to Newport. Easy peasy. Unfortunately, my flight from Chicago to Providence was cancelled at the last minute, and I was rebooked on a flight to Boston. That’s close, but not close enough. I ended up staying the night in Boston, and then I took a half hour Amtrak from Boston to Providence to catch my already-booked ferry. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t terrible, and I was still able to get here without a car (though I Uber-ed a couple times). It’s times like these that Transitland could actually come in handy. It’s an interesting interactive map that lets you explore all the public transportation routes all across the world. It’s not really a route-planning tool, because Google Maps already does that pretty well. But, it’s a fun exercise of seeing your options.

This trip also got me thinking about a post from Brandon Donnelly’s daily blog a few weeks ago. He linked this different interactive map that allows you to see how far you can go in Europe within a 5 hour train ride. It’s also not a route-planning tool or anything, but it’s fun and truly visualizes the connectivity of Europe. As an American, I am jealous. I love trains, and I wish I didn’t have to fly as much to get around. For most of the country, we lack that robust infrastructure and train system. But, there is a region where trains actually work. And that’s where I am this weekend. Amtrak states that the Northeast Corridor (NEC) is “the nation’s most congested rail corridor and is one of the highest volume rail corridors in the world.”

Yay for Amtrak and their high speed trains. It’s exciting, but it’s also one of the densest parts of the US. So, it’s not that crazy to see why Amtrak has such a presence here. Since non-Northeast US isn’t nearly as dense as Europe, we definitely need to build out our high speed rail networks (lets go Hyperloop!). But, that’s a topic for an entirely different post. I urge you to play around with the interactive maps. Sometimes things don’t need to actually have much purpose, other than to have a little fun and expose you to new perspectives and/or ideas.

Knee deep in one of my Google Maps adventures (it’s a black hole), I came across a weird angled street that doesn’t exist.

YOU: A street that doesn’t exist? You mean, like, an alley? Or the L?

ME: Ehh not really, kinda. It’s N Lakewood Ave, so it’s a street. But, then suddenly at Belmont Ave, the street ends, but the buildings make it seem like it keeps going. Let me explain.

It’s show-and-tell in class today, so I brought visual aids.

Do you see what I’m saying? That weird, angled void of building traveling southwest to northeast, basically running into the bottom of Wrigley Field. I guess it sort of looks like a street at this scale. Not doing myself any favors. Let’s zoom in.

Courtesy of Google Maps

Hopefully this helps. So, after seeing this and being confused, I decide to investigate on foot. It isn’t much of a trek, since I live very close by. Nonetheless, I threw on the trench coat and grabbed the magnifying glass. At street level, it looks like some developer or architect just wanted to put a funky angle on some of the building(s). But, I know that I saw a greater pattern when looking at the bird’s eye view. There’s more to this story. As I walk south, a set of old railroad tracks emerges in the middle of the street! Ah-ha! A break through. Just call me Sherlock. With more information at hand, I go back to my place to dive deeper.

Courtesy of University of Alabama and Chicago in Maps

It turns out that N Lakewood Ave is an old railroad track. (Should I have said spoiler alert earlier? Oh well). I found an old Rand McNally map of the Chicago Railroads from both 1901 and 1921. (Look at the North-South railroad line that has the “Belmont” station).

This isn’t some great revelation of history. I didn’t find the catacombs of Chicago, nor did I find the true source of the Great Chicago Fire. But, this is a small example of how design legacy is shown in our urban fabric. Our actions - our designs - can and will impact the future. The folks who laid out the network of railroads inevitably had an impact on where and how current Chicagoans live. In this instance, history allowed us (maybe forced us) to break the grid - creating an exciting and fun twist in Chicago’s latticework.