An interesting phase of New York's transportation problem is the proposal to construct underground moving sidewalks or platforms. The first one planned, of which the details are shown in the above drawing, is to go from Williamsburg to Bowling Green, and is to connect on the way with the surface and elevated cars. The fare will be one cent, and the speed will be from five to nine miles an hour. The reader is referred to an article on page 361."--printed on borderHarper's Weekly Quote 'Men like [railroad magnate] Cornelius Vanderbilt, Stuyvesant Fish [president of the Illinois Central Railroad], E.P. Ripley [president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway], and others are interested in the new plan, and the engineers not only pronounce it feasible, but extremely economical.'Later that year, the New York Times would go on to report concerns that constructing the moving sidewalks would be prohibitively expensive, requiring an unheard of 5-cent fare.The moving sidewalk eventually appeared at the World`s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, though it reportedly broke down often. An improved design showed up at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900, and from there the idea pretty much petered out.
