NYC Subway
NEW YORK – The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, a subsidiary agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and also known as MTA New York City Transit.
It is one of the most extensive public transportation systems in the world, with 468 reported passenger stations, (or 422 if stations connected by transfers are counted as one), 229 miles of routes, translating into 656 miles of revenue track, and a total of 842 miles including non-revenue trackage. The subway is also notable for being among the few rapid transit systems in the world to run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
It is the only system to hold that distinction among the ten busiest systems in the world in terms of annual passenger traffic. The system itself has more annual boardings than those in cities such as London, Paris, and Mexico City. It has nearly twice as many daily riders as every other rapid transit system in the United States combined.
Though it is known as "the subway", implying underground operations, about 40 percent of the system runs on above-ground right-of-way (the system is almost entirely underground in Manhattan, as well as portions in the other boroughs), including steel or cast iron elevated structures, concrete viaducts, embankments, open cuts and surface routes. All of these construction methods are completely grade-separated from road and pedestrian crossings, and most crossings of two subway tracks are grade-separated with flying junctions.
Currently, the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway in the Upper East Side of Manhattan is being built to provide relief to the overcrowded IRT Lexington Avenue Line.
An underground transit system in New York City was first built by Alfred Ely Beach in 1869. His Beach Pneumatic Transit only extended 312 feet under Broadway and exhibited his idea for a subway. The tunnel was never extended, although extensions had been planned to take the tunnel southward to The Battery and northwards towards the Harlem River. It was demolished when the BMT Broadway Line was built in the 1910s.
The first underground line of the subway opened on October 27, 1904, almost 35 years after the opening of the first elevated line in New York City, which became the IRT Ninth Avenue Line. The oldest structure still in use today opened in 1885 as part of the Lexington Avenue Line, and is now part of the BMT Jamaica Line in Brooklyn.
The oldest right-of-way, that of the BMT West End Line, was in use in 1863 as a steam railroad called the Brooklyn, Bath and Coney Island Rail Road. The Staten Island Railway, which opened in 1860, currently utilizes R44 subway cars, but it has no links to the rest of the system and is not usually considered part of the subway proper.