PATH actually means Port Authority Trans-Hudson
PATH Train map - from Newark to 33rd Street & WTC.
New Jersey
PATH trains started rolling in 1908, more than a 100 years ago.
Newark's Pennsylvania Station.
Leaving Newark's Penn Station.
getting to Harrison, N.J.
here it comes!
Harrison station is such a quaint little place that reminds one of a little town in the country.
Harrison Station entrance.
PATH bridge over the Hackensack River.
NYC bound.
leaving Journal Square station.
Journal Square platform can be pretty gloomy in winter.
Journal Square, Jersey City post card.
scraggy all the way...
Pavonia - Newport.
Hoboken, N.J.
Christopher Street entrance to PATH - Hudson Tube.
Christopher Street entrance to PATH - Hudson Tube.
Christopher Street, Greenwhich Village.
9th Street station.
9th Street stairs from the PATH station.
amazing 9th Street station passage-way.
14th Street Hudson Tube station.
14th Street station entrance.
33rd Street terminal.
N.Y.C.
Hotel McAlpin in the 1930s. on 33rd Street & Broadway.
Hotel Mc Alpin on Herald Square & 34th Street having the Empire State at its back.
ON THE NEWARK - WORLD TRADE CENTER PATH LINE.
Exchange Place
Exchange Place in Jersey City on 4th of July 1976 - it looks you're in Lower Manhattan but you're actually across the river...
waste land a few miles from downtown Manhattan.
pretty scary patch of land going towards Downtown Manhattan...
World Trade Center on a slow day.
Same WTC on a busy winter day.
World Trade Center in early 1971.
that's how it felt when you looked up from the ground floor... all the way to the skies...
Top of the world, Ma!
September 11, 2001.
http://www.hudsoncity.net/tubesenglish/1-constructionhistory.html
PATH, derived from Port Authority Trans-Hudson, is a rapid transit railroad linking Manhattan, New York City with Newark, Harrison, Hoboken and Jersey City in metropolitan northern New Jersey. It is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bi-state agency controlled by the governors of the two states.
While some PATH stations are adjacent or connected to New York City Subway, Newark Light Rail, Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, and New Jersey Transit stations, there are no free transfers between these different, independently run transit systems; however, PATH does accept the same pay-per-ride MetroCard used by the New York City Subway. PATH trains run 24 hours a day.
PATH has a route length of 13.8 miles (22.2 km), not including any route overlap.
PATH trains use tunnels only in Manhattan, Hoboken and downtown Jersey City. The tracks cross the Hudson River through century-old cast iron tubes that rest on the river bottom under a thin layer of silt. PATH's route from Grove Street in Jersey City west to Newark runs in open cuts, at grade level, and on elevated track.
As of the third quarter of 2011, PATH had an average weekday ridership of 259,100.
The history of PATH, originally known as the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, predates the first underground line of the New York City Subway (the IRT). Although the railroad was first planned in 1874, existing technologies could not safely tunnel under the Hudson River. Construction began on the existing tunnels in 1890, but stopped shortly thereafter when funding ran out. Construction did not resume until 1900 under the direction of William Gibbs McAdoo, an ambitious young lawyer who had moved to New York from Chattanooga, Tennessee. McAdoo later became president of what was known, for many years, as the H&M, Hudson Tubes or McAdoo Tunnels.
The first tunnel (the more northern of the uptown pair) was originally built without an excavation shield or iron construction because the chief engineer of the time, Dewitt Haskin, believed that the river silt was strong enough to maintain the tunnel's form (with the help of compressed air) until a 2½ foot (76 cm) thick brick lining could be constructed. Haskin's plan was to excavate the tunnel, then fill it with compressed air to expel the water and to hold the iron plate lining in place. They succeeded in building the tunnel out by approximately 1,200 feet (370 m) from Jersey City until a series of blowouts — including a particularly serious one in 1880 that took the lives of 20 workers — ended the project.
When the New York and Jersey Tunnel Company resumed construction on the tunnels in 1902, they employed a different method of tunneling using tubular cast iron plating. An enormous mechanical shield was pushed through the silt at the bottom of the river. The displaced mud was then placed into a chamber, where it was later shoveled into small cars that hauled it to the surface. In some cases, the silt was baked with kerosene torches to facilitate easier removal of the mud. The southern tunnel of the uptown pair, as well as the downtown tunnels, were all constructed using the tubular cast iron method.
The tunnels are separate for each track, which enables a better ventilation by so-called piston effect. When a train passes through the tunnel it pushes out the air in front of it toward the closest ventilation shaft in front, and "sucks-in" the air to the tunnel from the closest ventilation shaft behind it.
The tunnels in Manhattan, on the other hand, employed cut and cover construction methods.
Hudson and Manhattan Railroad years
The first trains ran in 1907 and revenue service started between Hoboken and 19th Street at midnight on 26 February 1908, after President Theodore Roosevelt pressed a button at the White House that turned on the electric lines in the uptown tubes.
On 19 July 1909, service began between the Hudson Terminal in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City, through the downtown tubes located about 11⁄4 miles (2.0 km) south of the first pair.
After the completion of the uptown Manhattan extension to 33rd Street and the westward extension to the now-defunct Manhattan Transfer and Park Place Newark terminus in 1911, the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad was considered to be complete. The cost of the entire project was estimated at between $55 and $60 million, equal to more than $1 billion in present-day dollars
Originally, the Hudson Tubes were designed to link three of the major railroad terminals on the Hudson River in New Jersey — the Lackawanna in Hoboken, the Erie and Pensylvannia Rail Road in Jersey City — with New York City.
While it still provides a connection to train stations in Hoboken and Newark, the commuter train stations at Erie (now Pavonia-Newport) and Exchange Place (the PRR station) have since closed down. Towards the end of the 20th century the old rail yards at Pavonia and Exchange Place were replaced with large-scale office, residential, and retail developments.
The original plan included an agreement between H&M and the Pennsylvania Railroad whereby PRR traffic headed for Lower Manhattan transferred at Manhattan Transfer to the Hudson Tubes, and H&M would operate all traffic — ferry, train, or tube — between Lower Manhattan and Newark. The Tubes would take over operation of the Jersey City Pennsylvania Railroad Harborside Terminal station at Exchange Place, when the new Pennsylvania Station in midtown Manhattan were to open, which would have its own tunnel under the Hudson River.
Penn Station in Manhattan did open some ten years later, but the plans had changed; the PRR maintained operation of its Jersey City Station and they also maintained their ferries between Exchange Place and Lower Manhattan. Additionally, the route between Journal Square (then Summit Avenue) and Newark became a joint operation of the H&M and PRR.
There were early negotiations for Pennsylvania Station to also be shared by the two railroads. Attempts to extend the Tubes to Astor Place and Grand Central Terminal failed, even after some construction began on the extension. There was also a plan to build an extension from the curve west of Hoboken Terminal to where Secaucus Junction is now, and a plan for a north-south connection from the 33rd Street Station south on Broadway to Union Square and then a new alignment to Hudson Terminal.
The opening of the Holland Tunnel in 1927, coupled with the Depression that began shortly after, marked the decline of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad.
Later, the construction of the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge further enticed people away from the railroad. All of these tunnels were intended to increase the flow of auto-traffic, providing an alternative to the railway.
Port Authority takeover
Promotions and other advertising proved ineffectual at slowing the financial decline. In the 1950s, H&M fell into bankruptcy, but continued to operate. It remained under bankruptcy court protection for years, a source of embarrassment.
For decades, New Jersey politicians asked the Port Authority to operate the vital transit link, but Port Authority officials were reluctant to assume the money-losing operation, and New York politicians did not want extra Port Authority money spent in New Jersey.
The World Trade Center finally enabled the three parties to compromise. The Port Authority agreed to purchase and maintain the Tubes in return for the rights to build the World Trade Center on the land occupied by H&M's Hudson Terminal, which was the Lower Manhattan terminus of the Tubes.
In 1962, the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company ceased operation of the Hudson Tubes, and service began through the Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation (PATH), a subsidiary organization of the Port Authority. Upon taking over the H&M Railroad, the Port Authority spent $70 million to modernize PATH's infrastructure.
Hackensack River in the foreground; Hudson River in the middle and Manhattan in the background.
Passaic River, Newark, N.J.
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