Friday, May 23, 2008

Nothing New Under the Sun

You may remember that the Red Hook Tunnel Bus was not an original idea of mine, but had been discussed by lots of other people before. Turns out I've been duplicating other ideas as well. Great minds think alike - sometimes at the same time, according to Malcolm Gladwell.

And so last week I wrote about possibilities for putting transit back on the Brooklyn Bridge. In today's headlines, Streetsblogger Ben Fried linked to a NY1 story about this idea, featuring "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz. In the comments, Susan Donovan linked to a 2005 blog post by her husband Aaron, who now works for the MTA and might be able to pass the idea on to some others. Aaron's post includes a lot of interesting stuff about the extensive streetcar and elevated train network that used to be hooked up to the bridge.

Commenter J. Mork linked to an awesome movie filmed in 1899 by Edison from the front of a train crossing the bridge, where you can see pedestrians, carriages and a trolley.

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