New York City Transportation System

The building of the First Transcontinental Railroad was a key symbol of the Industrial Revolution beginning in the United States. The railroad crossed the middle of the country and connected the eastern portion to the west. The building began in Sacramento, California and continued all the way to Council Bluffs, Iowa, resulting in 1,776 miles of new rails that were a staple for both the transportation of people and goods. Less lives were lost on the hazardous trails through the Rocky Mountains and thus the West Coast experienced an increase in population. The railroad greatly impacted the nation, as it united the people and also allowed for the improvement of the speed of shipment and price of goods throughout the nation. With the constant

To start, I will explain the purpose of the Transcontinental railroad. In Source #1”Full Steam Ahead The Transcontinental Railroad”, it says “People had been asking for coast-to-coast rail travel for decades. Since the invention of the locomotive in 1825, companies had built many rail lines. These railroads connected eastern cities and seaports,splashing travel times and helping these areas grow. Crossing the country, however was much more difficult. People and trade goods traveled by horse, stagecoach, or wagon train. The trip took months. Not many made the journey.” So the government during the time thought that building a railroad, would help businesses “ sprout up like corn.” According to Source #1 it also says “ Two companies immediately got to work. Railroads already existed that stretched from the East of Omaha, Nebraska. Now, the Union Pacific Railroad began extending the tracks from Omaha out to the West. The Central Pacific Railroad began in Sacramento,California and laid tracks out East. Eventually, the two companies would meet in Promontory, Utah. So, basically the purpose of the railroad was to get people and goods from coast-to-coast.

Moreover, public transportation is mainly common in means of transportation in and out of NYC due to the convenience, cost, and efficiency of public transportation. It has become more easily accessible due to having subways in nearly every other block,which is cheaper and faster. Public transportation is faster than driving into the city at times since it escapes the traffic on roads since it is underneath. Public transportation contains buses,trains,and light rails as well. Once again, automobile and the city of tomorrow can coexist, but it is not ideal in today’s

The Transcontinental Railroad was a technological breakthrough that managed to make the USA feel smaller to travelers. Railroad systems had been in place decades before the transcontinental railroad had been constructed. However, these systems were not in synch as there were many different railroad companies and even more laws in place from state to state. This was in part due to the civil war, during this period both governments wanted better transportation of goods and troops. This caused many factors like track gauge (spacings of the rails) lengths to differ vastly. These differences in factors caused the slowing of transportation as, many of the times, people and goods being transported had to move trains where these railways met up. Also, many railways would not intersect towns, causing them to board trains on the other side of town. The Transcontinental Railroad was one of the stepping stones towards standardization as these factors were enforced by law for uniformity, and towns began to be built around these railways. This allowed people to travel from the eastern coast to the western coast without having to swap railways many times and would bring people and their ideas closer together, and, most importantly, caused the massive increase in western expansion. The transcontinental railroad was brought forth due to the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, Chinese laborers, and western migration allowing for decreased travel times, bulk movement of resources and products, and

“Before the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, it cost nearly $1,000 dollars to travel across the country. After the railroad was completed, the price dropped to $150 dollars.”(History.com Staff). Prior to the railroad the average citizen of America could not afford to travel across the country cheaply. America waited for a means of transportation which would connect them from the Western to Eastern states. The responsibility of creating the railroads were left up to construction companies. Once this invention was created, traveling became quick, easy and affordable. The Transcontinental Railroad could be defined as the most significant change in America, during the 19th Century.

This made it very hard for the individual states to come up with the money. Usually private investors took care of this issue (Roark, 260). Canals were another way for an increase in transportation. They would connect cities, such as the Erie Canal, which covered the area between Albany and Buffalo and connecting New York City to the area of the Great Lakes (Roark, 261). Railroads also came into the picture with the first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio in 1829 (Roark, 262).

The development of the railroads was the beginning of a new transport system in America, it connected the east and west, and the communication across the continent grew easier. With the railroads brought new life to deserted towns, people settled along the railways, it was faster for people to travel from one way to the next, it was cheaper, and it led to new industries in lead,coal, and

These new railroads glued the country together thus creating a massive new market and loads of jobs contributing to the industrialisation of the US. Said industrialisation helped along mining and agriculture and brought supplies to the people that worked in said industries

Before railroads were ever implemented into American society, there was another form of primary transportation. In the early 1800s, goods and passengers were carried by ships. For some time, boats on rivers, lakes, and the ocean proved to be adequate enough to convey freight and people where it needed to go. However, these methods of transportation often posed problems of being too slow and too inconvenient. First appearing in the 1830s, the railroad business grew and in 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed, allowing people to think about more efficient settlement across the country. Railroads were the fountainhead of American expansion because they provided for town and city creation and development across the entire United States.

The Transcontinental Railroad was one of the most ambitious engineering projects, economic stimulants, and efficient methods of transportation in the early United States. If completed, the United States would be truly be united from east to west. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Transcontinental Railroad helped develop new opportunities for many aspects of American life.

The transcontinental railroad was the most influential innovation of the United States, that brought a revolution of how people traveled. One year after the Civil War ended the people of the United States were looking for a way to unite their country back together. This helped mold the United States as to what it has become today. It helped people cross the country and improved how goods were transported. The man that was forming the transcontinental railroad was a merchant named Asa Whitney. He had asked the government for funding to construct one of the greatest innovation of the United States. “Two railroads, the Central Pacific starting in San Francisco and a new railroad, the Union Pacific, starting in Omaha, Nebraska, would build the rail-line.” (ushistory.org). One fear of building the railroad was the danger of the “Great American Desert” because of the lack of resources. The Central Pacific was primarily made by Chinese immigrants. The Union Pacific was primarily made up of Irish immigrants. By spring of 1866 the Central Pacific had only build 68 miles of track from Sacramento, while the Union Pacific going west from Omaha built 200 miles of track in less than a year. Therefore the Union Pacific made millions more. The next three years the railroads would continue to try and make history.

The technological advancement of transportation through the creation of the railroad system had a revolutionary impact upon America as a nation. Trains was the primary way to travel at this time, but the creation of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 would have greater impacts than anyone could have imagined. This railroad was extremely unique because it was the first time a person could travel to the west coast from the east coast in one trip. It played a big part in unifying the North and South, helped the economy boom, and transformed America into the most industrialized country in the world. The nation received huge benefits from this new railroad system, as industry was able to boom all throughout the nation. A system of interdependence

Vanderbilt donated a lot of his larger ships to the Union Navy, but the rest he sold for sum of nearly $30 million. Vanderbilt bought the New York and Harlem Railroad along with the Hudson Railroad when he was 70 Years old. These railroads ran along the Erie Canal. After this the ruthless Vanderbilt wanted New York Central Railroad. He shut down the Hudson Railroad Bridge in order to gain control over opposing railroad companies. When he shut down the bridge, he let the other companies bleed until their stocks were really low and he bought as many as he could. He gained complete access to three companies, The Hudson Railroad, The Harlem Railroad, and The New York Central Railroad. Vanderbilt then brought all of his railroads together to make the Grand Central Depot, which was the largest building of its time. The Grand Central Depot would be later named the Grand Central Station. Vanderbilt’s railroads helped the country transport goods and people. The railways let America expand and develop from ocean to

With the development of the Pacific Railway Act this had brought about many new jobs. With the demand to keep the railroads going they needed to hire many people to look over dozens of sites. Trains also began transporting people. This led to the building of elevated rail lines which was a train above the road to leave room for other traffic. Following these were the building of new bridges, which lifted the limit of urban growth. These rail lines also were able to cover much more land faster and easier than any person could do on foot. The fact that people were able to travel faster and easier allowed the economy to grow by allowing them to go further to work and to buy other products. Now that railroads were booming economically, they began to sell stocks and bonds, which brought investors nationwide and internationally. “Sales of railroad stocks provided the major activity for the New York Stock Exchange through the second half of the nineteenth century”

Many of these modes couldn't accommodate the "Long distances and slow transportation hampered contact between eastern and western commercial centers."(Jones). People would have to travel countless days and night just to make a profit or to start a new life. These ways were dangerous to travel by and so the Transcontinental Railroad created a more safer and efficient way for people to get to the places that they wanted to go. There were other benefits that came with the railroad. For one, the country could create many fortunes that "would be made from this first transcontinental railroad and the other routes that soon followed."(Congress). The proposal of more annual income from sales piqued many interests. In fact the proposition for the idea came from the "New York City dry-goods merchant Asa Whitney"(Transcontinental). Eventually companies could rack in money from both ends of the country. Eventually, the many dollars that were spent on countless days of work could be replenish and many businesses could make a living by moving their products around. It was soon that people were making millions just from shipping and "By 1880 more than $50 million worth of freight was transported annually from the East Coast to the West Coast along the transcontinental line."(Transcontinental). Changes were happening and people were making fortunes off of what had been made. As