According to the website I linked to above, the subway broke ground in 1938. Also, according to that link, the first El opened in 1892 (agreeing with your statement.)
I read that Manhattan used to have els and the city ordered all the transportation companies to put the el lines underground in South Manhattan or lose the franchise.
Chicago had a ton of plan for subways, but they started too late. They were starting projects in the 30s, when the money was slow and by the 40s, they had the money and no workers due to the war. After the war, the flood of people to the suburbs made subways and public transit seem “iffy.”
In fact a few of the el lines in Chicago were closed, mostly branch lines. One subway that was to run downtown to O’hare is the blue line. Putting the line between the expressway was considered a good alternative to a subway and much cheaper
I know Chicago also has some odd laws about homeowners being able to restrict el lines on the streets. This is why many of the lines run through what were once alley or a few blocks from the main street as the transit companies couldn’t get rights to put up trains on main thoroughfares
So we’re saying, in a consensus-ish way, that it was technologically unfeasible to build subways when the lines went up; and when it became feasible it was no longer cost effective?
Makes sense (I was hoping for something weirder, but that’s life). Thanks everybody!
movie studios opposed the building of subways because they weren’t as good for scenes especially chase scenes.
It has always been much cheaper to build elevateds than subways. These days, it’s roughly four times as expensive. Some cities had the political will to force rapid transit underground, but Chicago waited just a few years too long and the rapid transit companies were no longer profitable. Chicago (and New York with the IND) took advantage of PWA money to build subway lines during the Depression. As recently as the early 1980s, Chicago hoped to replace the Loop L with a new subway, but the cost of doing that eventually became unrealistic.
Another reason to stick to elevated tracks: L tracks were also used by freight trains and interurban trains, most notably the Northshore Line electroliners. You’d probably have had to build a larger-bore subway to handle that traffic.
That’s a bit of an overstatement. The only freight service on the L was that little section of track elevated on fill north of Montrose that the Northwestern L took over from the Milwaukee Road. The North Shore and CA&E interurban cars would have fit through the original subways just fine (the Kimball subway is a closer question). The limiting factors are the tight curve at Sheridan & Sheffield and the width of the L platforms. Gauntlet tracks were used to keep freight cars from hitting the edge of the platforms, but the North Shore’s Electroliners and similar cars were built with “fishbelly” sides that are narrow at floor level and curve outward at shoulder height.