HBLR wrote:I would like to see some diagrams of what's under the possible routes as far as subway stuff & bedrock between 34th & 42nd and from 7th to park ave. Maybe they did stop because of bedrock?
They had other projects with higher priority, such as completing 2 more tunnels from Hudson Terminal to Erie (Pavonia/Newport). Remember, the H&M's goal was providing a better method for people to get between the railroads in NJ that stopped at the waterfront and Manhattan. Getting the Erie's customers to/from Hudson Terminal without stopping at a competitor (PRR's Exchange Place) was a higher priority than taking them from a NJ long-distance railroad to a NY one at Grand Central.
By the time they started thinking about it (late 1913/early 1914) subways were operating in Manhattan and NYC realized that it could leverage the asset of street right-of-way for underground transit. Only the piece of the H&M from 9th St. to 33rd St. had been built under a public street - the rest was on private right-of-way.
Remember that the H&M didn't get to 33rd until early 1910, and McAdoo had left the H&M in 1913 to become US Secretary of the Treasury. One could argue that this deprived the H&M of the single great visionary that created the existing system.
Then in 1917 the US entered WWI. Once recovery from the war was complete at home, the Holland Tunnel opened in 1927, causing H&M revenue to plummet (and sowing the seeds of the eventual 1958 bankruptcy). Then you had the Great Depression, and any and all grand plans came to a screeching halt.
Currently, you have such a stack of things near 33rd that it wouldn't be possible without an incredible amount of hardship and billions in engineering- From the top down, you have the BMT subway, 6th Avenue subway, PRR cross-town tunnels, trunk sewer lines, and the main water tunnel. Even if you get past that, once you get up to Bryant park you have the 7 line and the shuttle to contend with.
We've discussed this in the past -
here is a post I made some years ago which includes some original H&M drawings of the plans.