Rochester, NY- Broad Street/Subway Project, March 18, 2010

The City of Rochester, NY has started to go ahead with their project on broad street. The last I heard they wanted to fill in the subway because of there being damage done to the road because of the void beneath it.

Broad Street between West Main and Allen Street has been blocked off for several weeks now. This footage is from March 18, 2010.

For those who don't know. The Erie Canal used to come through downtown Rochester, what is now Broad Street was an aqueduct which carried the canal over the Genesee River. Specifically where Broad Street/Erie Canal cross the river is near the Library at Broad and South Ave.

The City emptied the aqueduct and put a train track in it, much of the duct was covered and turned into a tunnel. This was the short lived Rochester Subway System. from what I've seen it was a "one car at a time" system... not like the large multi-car modern commuter trains that you see in NYC.

A lot of people bought cars and stopped using public transportation and the city decided to shut down the subway. A road was built and is what we have there today, called Broad Street- But the subway tunnel has remained beneath it. As far as I know it is the only part of the original tunnel still accessible.

The city is trying to fill in parts of the tunnel now. There is always a lot of talk about the future of Broad Street. One idea that the city has been putting significant money into is that of Tearing out the Road, exposing the aqueduct- filling it up with water again and turning it into a public attraction where people can take a 1 mile boat ride down through the west side. There would be sidewalks on either side of the faux canal.

The broad street aqueduct project was recently described as a Twenty year project. So far the project has been architected and feasibility studies have been implemented which include shutting down Broad street from South Ave to Exchange Street for a few weeks to study the effects on current businesses and traffic flow on Main Street and other peripheral streets. In other words it is likely that hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on Broad Street very recently.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• rochester
• ny
• subway
• broad street
• West Main
• Brown
• Nick Tahoes
• 490
• 31
• erie canal
• upstate
• Bob Duffy

[jaquanarezoo]

This is terrible we could have rebuilt that tunnel and had a wonderfull light rail system

[tankgirl3366]

this has a very mizyzaki feel to it.... i feel like some cute, very sad little anime kid should come running out somewhere, i like this, but it makes me sad,

[RochesterSubway]

Nico, great video. FYI, the city has adopted the canal rewatering plan. This fill project is pretty much phase 1 of that plan. That's why they're not filling the entire tunnel. Only the portion that will not be converted back to a canal. Whether or not they will be able to pay for this $65 million plan is yet to be seen.