None of the options were as good as electric trains, but some of them could have been made to work.
Now that you’ve brought up other working systems, the question would be if the pre-electric subways ROIed. Yes there’s cable driven streetcars in SF, as I recall switching cable is something the driver does. So that’s a valid power mechanism.
Mitigations and inferior tech has costs. Higher ceilings, people passing out from CO exposure and heat, big ventilation fans that waste coal.
Were these costs enough to make the London subway unsustainable in an economic sense? The Baltimore one sounds too small to be viable.
Another thing you’d have to look at is what NYC residents are giving up. If a subway saves 20 minutes each way at that time from a 10 hour workday (Fair Labor Standards Act is 1944 limiting it to nominally 44 hours a week except for exempt), that’s a cost of 6 percent to daily productivity.
Less because early subway networks only have partial coverage, so only the portion of the city’s residents covered have a 6 percent delta in productivity.
This is such a small effect the historical data may not show anything. Many other factors would affect the economic performance of NYC and Chicago.
A hypothetical technology that made a 100% difference in productivity, or 1000%, would be far more costly to give up, and it might simply not be a viable choice at all. (unviable because it effectively makes the group “not giving in to temptation” cost 2x-10x as much to do any task, and they are selling goods and services to the global market. Would go broke fast. I did this analysis when looking at autonomous driving, and I realized that autonomous taxi and trucking firms could set their price to where their competition still using drivers loses money on every ride)
The London subway was private and returned enough profit to slowly expand while it was coal powered. Once it electrified, it became more profitable and expanded quickly.
The Baltimore tunnel was and is part of an intercity line that is mostly above ground. It was technologically similar to London, but operationally very different.
Now that you’ve brought up other working systems, the question would be if the pre-electric subways ROIed. Yes there’s cable driven streetcars in SF, as I recall switching cable is something the driver does. So that’s a valid power mechanism.
Mitigations and inferior tech has costs. Higher ceilings, people passing out from CO exposure and heat, big ventilation fans that waste coal.
Were these costs enough to make the London subway unsustainable in an economic sense? The Baltimore one sounds too small to be viable.
Another thing you’d have to look at is what NYC residents are giving up. If a subway saves 20 minutes each way at that time from a 10 hour workday (Fair Labor Standards Act is 1944 limiting it to nominally 44 hours a week except for exempt), that’s a cost of 6 percent to daily productivity.
Less because early subway networks only have partial coverage, so only the portion of the city’s residents covered have a 6 percent delta in productivity.
This is such a small effect the historical data may not show anything. Many other factors would affect the economic performance of NYC and Chicago.
A hypothetical technology that made a 100% difference in productivity, or 1000%, would be far more costly to give up, and it might simply not be a viable choice at all. (unviable because it effectively makes the group “not giving in to temptation” cost 2x-10x as much to do any task, and they are selling goods and services to the global market. Would go broke fast. I did this analysis when looking at autonomous driving, and I realized that autonomous taxi and trucking firms could set their price to where their competition still using drivers loses money on every ride)
The London subway was private and returned enough profit to slowly expand while it was coal powered. Once it electrified, it became more profitable and expanded quickly.
The Baltimore tunnel was and is part of an intercity line that is mostly above ground. It was technologically similar to London, but operationally very different.