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Which Seattle transit of 22 miles? The Line T took 3 years to construct, Line 1 is 22 miles but it's already built, it took 6 years of construction. Indeed it t

Which Seattle transit of 22 miles? The Line T took 3 years to construct, Line 1 is 22 miles but it's already built, it took 6 years of construction. Indeed it took longer to plan, but we're talking building in a major metropolitan area, not empty land. > All the grading, track laying, and bridge construction was done by muscle. It's both an argument to applaud efforts of the past, as well as criticise the nature of the past. I certainly wouldn't want to be a labourer in 1865, when life expectancy in the US was less than half (37) of today's 78 or so. It's not all labour standards of course, but it certainly must have played a role.

WalterBright 5y ago
> empty land Boring through two mountain ranges, crossing many rivers (including the Mississippi). Endless bridges for ravines, creeks, and rivers. Lots of snow sheds, the longest was 29 miles, using 29,000,000 board feet of lumber. Done with muscle.
- imgabe 5y ago
  But there were no neighborhood activists protesting every foot of track, demanding endless environmental impact studies, attending every city council meeting to complain about the project, etc, etc. Building a bridge across a ravine is a fairly well understood and easy to solve problem as long as no one is actively trying to stop you.
  - staplers 5y ago
    But there were no neighborhood activists protesting every foot of track Well, there were, but they were killed/displaced.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    > But there were no neighborhood activists protesting every foot of track, demanding endless environmental impact studies, attending every city council meeting to complain about the project, etc, etc. People love to get their pitchforks out against eminent domain but I assert without it not a single large public works project would ever get built. No dams, no sewer treatment plants, no water lines, no power lines, no power plants, no trains, no highways, no anything. Without eminent domain, there will always be some holdout somewhere that throws a wrench in things no matter how many truckloads of money you toss at them. To actually build massive public infrastructure, you need a way to force people to cooperate. Without, you'd never get the project off the ground.
- secabeen 5y ago
  > Done with muscle. And the lives of between 1,000 and 2,000 largely Chinese immigrants for the transcontinental railroad alone. Certainly more died during the construction of the remainder of the US rail network. Construction projects in other countries were significantly more deadly.
  - asdff 5y ago
    That wasn't due to speed, that was due to a lack of safety regulations. Spain and China built out national high speed rail networks in timely fashions in recent years with pretty normal accident rates for modern construction. French companies even offered faster and cheaper proposals for california HSR, and we said 'no' because they were French and not in some Bakersfield politican's donor list.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  > Boring through two mountain ranges, crossing many rivers (including the Mississippi). The First Transcontinental Railroad started from Omaha, Nebraska, so it crossed neither the Missouri nor the Mississippi. Indeed, it only crosses the North Platte River, not the main stem itself, and this is the river famously described as "too thick to drink, too thin to plow," i.e., not quite the same challenge as crossing the broader and much deeper Missouri, Mississippi, or Ohio rivers.
- IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  > Done with muscle. Yes, Chinese muscle, many of whom died in the process. And I think we covered the 37 years of life expectancy during that time in the US, let alone for a Chinese immigrant doing heavy labour at a fraction of white people's salaries. I for one would not have preferred being born in 1865 to work on this railroad. But feel free to voluntarily give up all your privileges at your current job, it's definitely easier to get things done at the labour standards of 1860, using underpaid immigrant labour to do dangerous work. Let's all just give up our rights! But my point was, the land was empty, i.e. not void of nature, but empty of people making political claims, e.g. like when building a transit line through Seattle. They're not remotely similar projects. The Seattle line of 22 miles you mentioned was built in the same 6 years, with need for far less 'muscle'. At least empty of political claims if we forget about the de facto genocide of the native Americans that had to go at some point to make the US what it is today. I'm not sharing any nostalgia you may have of construction in this time.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > Chinese muscle, many of whom died in the process. There were many thousands of others. The eastern team did not employ any Chinese. > rights Nobody gave up any rights to work on the railroad. None were conscripts or forced labor. Any could walk away anytime they pleased. > They're not remotely similar projects. Nothing resembling the project had ever been done before. Lots of people thought it was infeasible. It was a triumph, exceeding even the wildest expectations. It arguably was the lynch pin that created the modern America. The railroad also saved lots of lives. Before the railroad, an estimated 65,000 people died on the Oregon Trail. After, they hopped on a train and arrived intact 3 days later.
    - axiolite 5y ago
      > Before the railroad, an estimated 65,000 people died on the Oregon Trail. After, they hopped on a train and arrived intact 3 days later. "Railroad travel was dangerous in the early years. Train wrecks and derailments were common killing and injuring countless passengers and railroad men. Boilers blew up, bridges collapsed under the weight of trains, brittle iron tracks cracked, primitive breaks overheated and failed. The lack of a signal system sometimes caused two trains to be accidentally switched onto the same track and sent speeding into each other. The wood passenger car seemed almost to self-destruct on impact." "Passengers could be crushed and thrown out. Windows would shatter because there was no safety plate glass in that day. Stoves would overturn spilling hot coals through the crushed and broken wood and instantly trains were set on fire. Cars would fall into rivers off of bridges." "In the race to build the line there was naturally a long list of defects, unsafe bridges, tunnels too narrow, road bed not properly level. Poor rail alignment and carelessly laid cross ties. One government inspector declared it the worst railroad he had ever seen. But that didn't stop the railroaders." "More than six times as many railroad men as passengers were killed or injured in accidents during the early days of the transcontinental railroad. Railroading ranked as one of America's most dangerous jobs." "The technology was so dangerous that virtually every break man was maimed." Source: The Railroads That Tamed The West, Modern Marvels Season 2 Episode 9. 1996. https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cvideo_work%7C4101318#panel-transcript https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographi...
alvah 5y ago
It's mostly infant mortality, not labor standards. Average remaining years of life at age 10 has gone up, but nothing like as dramatically as the average life expectancy at birth has (expected age of death for a 10-year old white male: 58 in 1850, 76 in 2011).

WalterBright 5y ago

> empty land Boring through two mountain ranges, crossing many rivers (including the Mississippi). Endless bridges for ravines, creeks, and rivers. Lots of snow sheds, the longest was 29 miles, using 29,000,000 board feet of lumber. Done with muscle.

imgabe 5y ago
But there were no neighborhood activists protesting every foot of track, demanding endless environmental impact studies, attending every city council meeting to complain about the project, etc, etc. Building a bridge across a ravine is a fairly well understood and easy to solve problem as long as no one is actively trying to stop you.
- staplers 5y ago
  But there were no neighborhood activists protesting every foot of track Well, there were, but they were killed/displaced.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > But there were no neighborhood activists protesting every foot of track, demanding endless environmental impact studies, attending every city council meeting to complain about the project, etc, etc. People love to get their pitchforks out against eminent domain but I assert without it not a single large public works project would ever get built. No dams, no sewer treatment plants, no water lines, no power lines, no power plants, no trains, no highways, no anything. Without eminent domain, there will always be some holdout somewhere that throws a wrench in things no matter how many truckloads of money you toss at them. To actually build massive public infrastructure, you need a way to force people to cooperate. Without, you'd never get the project off the ground.
secabeen 5y ago
> Done with muscle. And the lives of between 1,000 and 2,000 largely Chinese immigrants for the transcontinental railroad alone. Certainly more died during the construction of the remainder of the US rail network. Construction projects in other countries were significantly more deadly.
- asdff 5y ago
  That wasn't due to speed, that was due to a lack of safety regulations. Spain and China built out national high speed rail networks in timely fashions in recent years with pretty normal accident rates for modern construction. French companies even offered faster and cheaper proposals for california HSR, and we said 'no' because they were French and not in some Bakersfield politican's donor list.
jcranmer 5y ago
> Boring through two mountain ranges, crossing many rivers (including the Mississippi). The First Transcontinental Railroad started from Omaha, Nebraska, so it crossed neither the Missouri nor the Mississippi. Indeed, it only crosses the North Platte River, not the main stem itself, and this is the river famously described as "too thick to drink, too thin to plow," i.e., not quite the same challenge as crossing the broader and much deeper Missouri, Mississippi, or Ohio rivers.
IkmoIkmo 5y ago
> Done with muscle. Yes, Chinese muscle, many of whom died in the process. And I think we covered the 37 years of life expectancy during that time in the US, let alone for a Chinese immigrant doing heavy labour at a fraction of white people's salaries. I for one would not have preferred being born in 1865 to work on this railroad. But feel free to voluntarily give up all your privileges at your current job, it's definitely easier to get things done at the labour standards of 1860, using underpaid immigrant labour to do dangerous work. Let's all just give up our rights! But my point was, the land was empty, i.e. not void of nature, but empty of people making political claims, e.g. like when building a transit line through Seattle. They're not remotely similar projects. The Seattle line of 22 miles you mentioned was built in the same 6 years, with need for far less 'muscle'. At least empty of political claims if we forget about the de facto genocide of the native Americans that had to go at some point to make the US what it is today. I'm not sharing any nostalgia you may have of construction in this time.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > Chinese muscle, many of whom died in the process. There were many thousands of others. The eastern team did not employ any Chinese. > rights Nobody gave up any rights to work on the railroad. None were conscripts or forced labor. Any could walk away anytime they pleased. > They're not remotely similar projects. Nothing resembling the project had ever been done before. Lots of people thought it was infeasible. It was a triumph, exceeding even the wildest expectations. It arguably was the lynch pin that created the modern America. The railroad also saved lots of lives. Before the railroad, an estimated 65,000 people died on the Oregon Trail. After, they hopped on a train and arrived intact 3 days later.
  - axiolite 5y ago
    > Before the railroad, an estimated 65,000 people died on the Oregon Trail. After, they hopped on a train and arrived intact 3 days later. "Railroad travel was dangerous in the early years. Train wrecks and derailments were common killing and injuring countless passengers and railroad men. Boilers blew up, bridges collapsed under the weight of trains, brittle iron tracks cracked, primitive breaks overheated and failed. The lack of a signal system sometimes caused two trains to be accidentally switched onto the same track and sent speeding into each other. The wood passenger car seemed almost to self-destruct on impact." "Passengers could be crushed and thrown out. Windows would shatter because there was no safety plate glass in that day. Stoves would overturn spilling hot coals through the crushed and broken wood and instantly trains were set on fire. Cars would fall into rivers off of bridges." "In the race to build the line there was naturally a long list of defects, unsafe bridges, tunnels too narrow, road bed not properly level. Poor rail alignment and carelessly laid cross ties. One government inspector declared it the worst railroad he had ever seen. But that didn't stop the railroaders." "More than six times as many railroad men as passengers were killed or injured in accidents during the early days of the transcontinental railroad. Railroading ranked as one of America's most dangerous jobs." "The technology was so dangerous that virtually every break man was maimed." Source: The Railroads That Tamed The West, Modern Marvels Season 2 Episode 9. 1996. https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cvideo_work%7C4101318#panel-transcript https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographi...

alvah 5y ago

It's mostly infant mortality, not labor standards. Average remaining years of life at age 10 has gone up, but nothing like as dramatically as the average life expectancy at birth has (expected age of death for a 10-year old white male: 58 in 1850, 76 in 2011).