Did railroads in cities ruin the surroundings?

The same area today:

Now, for the most part railroads were essentially "there first" and cities grew around them. 

Downtown Chicago aside, most of the time in urban areas, railroads were surrounded by industrial areas, not residential. The tracks were already there as residential areas spread.  When railroads elevated sections of the line in these urbanized areas, it was less expensive to build and maintain fills and retaining walls vs. wood or steel trestlework.

The political and social climate was different when many urban highways were built.  People loved their cars and saw less use for the railroads.  Many trolley and interuban lines went under as more people drove to work in the cities and that traffic had to go somewhere. 

Rusty

In Albany, NY  they regret building a highway along the river, limiting access to the riverfront.

But they've managed to squeeze in a park and bike path.

Hindsight is 20/20.

I doubt they "ruined" cities - railroads made cities in many regards, but railyards and major ROW certainly shaped them, both good and bad, and made them what they are.  I think over time many municipalities viewed the railyards and all as something they wished would move somewhere else, but you know  . . . you don't get to pick your grandparents, or your past history.

Hmmmm, I believe a person wouldn't have to study to long, a find that it's always society who moves close to "work", enlieu of being the other way around. Remember as a kid, it was actually a drive in the country for a short while, going to pick my father up from work, @ the Old Aetna Oil Refinery in southwest Louisville. Then when I got to High School age, and would drive the same road, the city had grown to where Heavy Industry was, and had been since late teens early 20's, plus society was demanding for them to do this, that and the other, to make the neighborhood picturesque! Yes, there has to be check's and balances for all hvy industry, and that's why all of the regulators have come into being. I don't think society does a very good job of regulating themselves. In other words you have to protect stupid people from themselves.....................Brandy

I agree with the above poster, highways hurt cities more than railroads. The Cross Bronx Expressway destroyed the Bronx. It cut and Italian and Irish neighborhood in half with utter disregard for the population. In part because Robert Moses did not like poor people..But, the Bronx has still not recovered 50 years later!! Highways also led to white flight in cities like Newark, Detroit and Phili..

I fancy myself as somewhat of a ferro-archeologist. In many cities, streets and buildings were built to accommodate the railroads that delivered and picked up goods from various warehouses, produce districts and manufacturers in the cities.

Less than a mile north of the home where I grew up, the State of California planned a freeway (the I-105 "Century Freeway"). They condemned and eventually tore down the homes along the right-of-way, cutting a swath through several neighborhoods, displacing residents, and causing a drop in property values. Ironically, the freeway took almost 30 years to complete and by then half of the industry it was designed to help had moved out. The traffic has built up over the years, but the neighborhood hasn't really recovered.

The City of South Pasadena has been in a decades-long fight with CalTrans and the City of Alhambra over completion of the I-710 (Formerly the CA-7 Long Beach Freeway). It was originally planned to join up with the I-210 in Pasadena. Alhambra wants it completed to eliminate all of the street traffic to Pasadena that goes through their city. They've closed off side streets and unsynchronized traffic lights to make the drive as miserable as possible for people from South Pasadena and Pasadena. Completion of the freeway will cut another swath and destroy some vintage homes. It's a mess. The rail routes through the area were there first (Pacific Electric) and had their own rights-of-way around which the neighborhoods grew.

About the worse thing railroads did to center cities was gradually cover buildings with greasy soot. I was in Atlanta staying at the Biltmore Hotel in 1960 and observed a series of buildings being sandblasted in what was described as "a cleanup phase". Of course at that date Steam had disappeared from the Southern Railway and the several other roads that entered Atlanta.

I guess on-grade rail crossings such as the busy Yanceyville Road crossing in Grensboro on the double-track Southern main[at that point] to Washington could be considered a nuisance since folks constantly complain about the wait on 120+ car trains passing and the diesel "music", both motors and horns, as the unit gets up to speed leaving the Yard Limit at the nearby downtown Depot.

Good place to take photos if one likes "stinking diesels"[Roger] and boring rail boxes.

No

NO...but crumbling slums backed up to the tracks certainly spoil the view from the

railroad, which, as noted above, was almost always there first.

I read the first edition of Tom Lewis's Divided Highways when it came out and found it fascinating, particularly since the title refers just as much to the division of America by these monster barriers to culture and neighborhoods, as it does to the divided lane nature of the highway system.  Talk about "other side of the tracks" . . . 

But while highways get blamed, and have a role, underlying their impact is a cultural phenomena that would happen, one way or another, regardless or what and how we built our cities - they would divide into neighborhoods and "areas."  Still, reading the histiroy you wonder why early highway planners didn't pick up on at least some of this, or maybe they just didn't care: some evidence that is the case.

Hey Dewey, When I want to watch trains (railfan), I normally go to Pomona Yard with my scanner and ATCS on my laptop to watch and monitor trains...especially my "stinkin' diesels"

Well, I was asked by some young children who had recently ridden on a commuter train why rich people didn't build their big houses near the rail road tracks.

Tell them that in Philly,the boss of the Pennsylvania Railroad ordered his underlings to build their fancy houses near the railroad. Bryn Mawr,Villanova,St. David and other towns were part of the scheme. That's why that part of Philly suburbs is called the Main Line.

What really hurt the cities is the bankrupt businesses that left their blight after they folded up shop...

Detroit has living scars of this. What should have been removed remains today, thanks to our previous leadership...

J Daddy,

I concur!!!!

Ralph

When I was a kid Pittsburgh and Cleveland went through the same peril.

The new water front in Cleveland is fantastic, and the train station was updated really nice.

Pittsburgh had a really tough time with all the vacant steel plants. But visit now and WoW!

Detroit will get there... it just needs some time....

In most all areas, space for conveyance, whether it be for trains, boat docks, autos, trucks, people movers, and, in some cases people themselves, has a negative impact on surrounding. Though all are necessary to make a city a city. ****ed if you do, and ****ed if you don't.

Actually, some of the first controlled access highways got it "right".  The went near, but not through cities.  Sometimes they built a spur free/tollway to get to the city core.  It keeps transcon traffic that is not stopping out of the city.

Parts of I5 south of Portland through the Williamtte Valley, and the Penna Pike in Eastern PA come to mind.  I 5 stays out of Downtown Portland, Salem and Eugene, and I105 connects the later to the main Interstate.

I76/276 avoids Philly, and heads NE to New Jersey.

Boston had a similar split with the I 93 corridor.   After monumental construction had begun, it was deemed the "Big Dig".  A lot of the original construction/ramps and exits were torn apart and re-done. $12 billion, one of the largest public works projects ever. Some say the project is still years from completion.

A freeway was built along the waterfront of downtown San Francisco in the 1950s.  It was called the Embarcadero freeway and was supposed to connect I-80 with the Golden Gate Bridge.  The Embarcadero freeway was never completed because activists were able to stop it.

It blocked the main waterfront until the 1989 earthquake made it unsafe.  The City decided to tear down the freeway instead of rebuilding it.  The closing of the freeway caused a lot of financial pain to many businesses who counted on it to bring people into SF to shop.  

The freeway has been replaced with a wide waterfront road, parks, upgraded Ferry Building and piers.  This rebuilding took 20 some years.  The area is now booming with new business.  Although there was much pain from the earthquake and the loss of business, San Francisco is a much better city now that the Embarcadero freeway is gone.  

A good example of a city being transformed when a railroad right of way was buried is the Grand Central Terminal project in NY undertaken in the early 1900s.  The entire area of Park Avenue was basically a dirty, busy commuter and long distance railroad yard and station. A tragic train accident caused by smoke lead the NY legislator to mandate that steam engines could no longer be operated in NY.  The NYC and NH railroads decided to use new electric technology to bury the tracks.  This allowed the Park Avenue area to be developed into what it is today.

Joe

I wonder what all of the railroaders who now have to work underground have to say about that.  

If anything, cities ruined the railroads, when everybody got all hippie-dippie and forgot what side their bread was buttered on, and how the butter got into the city in the first place!

My forefathers worked in the 20th street shops in Columbus.  Dieselization shut them down for the most part, opening up large areas of the central part of town.  Vanishing passenger train service removed the need for Union Station, opening up more holes.  Long standing complaints about the noise (smoke back in the day) and blocked roads, combined with creation of Penn Central led to the building of Buckeye Yard outside of town.  Those fancy freeways did allow my father to buy a house in the 'burbs and drive into town instead of getting something in town and taking the street cars buses.

Today, much of the space once taken up by the yards is empty.  CUS space was used to build a new convention center.  If one knows where to look, you can see the foundation of the 20th street roundhouse and back shop were Dad, as a little boy, got a tour of the PRR S-1 when it was in town for service and a great uncle witnessed the accidental dropping of a 2-8-0 from the over head crane in the back shop.  During WWI, there were 8,000 jobs, at the end of steam, 1,300 jobs and none today.  

Bob

I wish all cities with a union station had preserved them.  Some are finding new use as they were intended...like Denver.  But other were destroyed or sit in ruins.  At least develop them into commercial space while preserving the look.