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New York Underground
- d0ugal 14y agoThe to scale version is better: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/scale.html http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/scale.h...
- potatolicious 14y agoWoah. The water mains are 800 feet down? How does that work? How did they even get there?
- thematt 14y agoI'm guessing they probably got there before everything on top was built, but how do they get down there now for repairs and such?
- DanBC 14y agoThe water has to get in somewhere, and come out somewhere, so you go to those places and put a robot vehicle in.
- kibwen 14y agoFrom Wikipedia: "[New York City Water Tunnel No. 3] was authorized in 1954. A third tunnel was needed so tunnel one and tunnel two could be closed for repairs. Stage One was begun in 1970 and completed in 1993 and put into service in 1998."[1] This seems to imply that the later stages of the old two tunnels have never seen repairs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No._3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No....
- donohoe 14y agoNo - they're still building out these tunnels. My uncle worked briefly on the project in the 60's but its very much active http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gfSEjMtAoc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gfSEjMtAoc
- pmb 14y agoThey don't. That's why they are building a third water tunnel. For backup, and so they can do repairs on the other two.
- jakeonthemove 14y agoVery hard, apparently, as jontas pointed out: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/nyregion/23tunnel.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/nyregion/23tunnel.html?pag...
- _delirium 14y agoIt's closer to an underground version of an aqueduct than to a normal water main, a long-distance tunnel being bored to bring water from upstate reservoirs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No._3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No._... I'm not 100% sure why it's that deep (and can't seem to find a solid explanation). What I can glean suggests that it's partly due to wanting it to be in more geologically stable bedrock that passes below any bodies of water and geological aberrations in the area. And partly so that it can be fed by gravity along a continual downwards slope, which causes it to be fairly deep by the end (then at the end the tunnel narrows, increasing pressure sufficiently to push water up a vertical shaft to the surface distribution network).
- napierzaza 14y agoThe water is coming downhill. So it probably starts higher and goes lower and lower. Same thing with sewers. they have to have a slight angle in the right direction
- axefrog 14y agoThis is a very old article. One of the pages links to this page - http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/myth000.html http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/myth000... - which suggests using RealPlayer 3.0 and Shockwave 5.0.
- ilija139 14y agoIt's from 1997
- _delirium 14y agoThe oldest version the Wayback Machine has of it is from 1999, and at that time it had a (c) 1997 in the header: http://web.archive.org/web/19990508090930/http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/nymain.html http://web.archive.org/web/19990508090930/http://www.nationa... Oddly they've taken out the (c) 1997 part, maybe to make it not seem as ancient? I suppose it's still reasonably relevant; not much of this basic information has changed. Heck, Water Tunnel #3 is still under construction.
- Hopka 14y agoThere's still a copyright notice at the bottom left: > © 1996- National Geographic Society. All rights reserved. So is it safe to guess it's from 1996 or later?
- sehrope 14y agoI'm pretty sure the audio is RealAudio encoded though can't confirm as I don't have the codec installed (does anyone anymore?). This is just a guess based on the .ram file extension. Still cool to see how engaging you can make a site using 10-15 year old technology. Content is king.
- kalleboo 14y agoThe .ram file points to a real media rtsp-precursor streaming server that no longer exists (pnm://real.nationalgeographic.com)
- gklitt 14y agoThese fascinating Web 1.0 pages prove that content is king. I miss Geocities.
- ChrisArchitect 14y agoyeah, seems to be a lot of old links getting shared lately. please stop. Maybe start using http://isitold.com/ http://isitold.com/ before posting.
- m_for_monkey 14y agoHow old are you? If you are older than 1 year, please stop commenting!
- superjared 14y agoWho cares if it's old? The information is still as relevant as it is interesting.
- nicholassmith 14y agoYou know, I'm glad I got rid of all my encyclopaedias, the information had been in there for ages!
- larrys 14y agohttp://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. "
- larrys 14y agoHmm, now see I find this interesting (at your company?) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366547 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366547 (I just posted this.)
- yskchu 14y agoThe most interesting I found was the steam pipes.
- rprime 14y agoIndeed. There's is such thing where I live and I find it quite interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system
- tallanvor 14y agoSteam pipes are pretty common and can be quite economical. Besides New York, you'll find them in Seattle, San Francisco, and a number of other large cities in the US, as well as all over Europe. On a small scale, a number of institutions run them as well - IIT in Chicago, for example, has a central steam plant.
- gee_totes 14y agoI'm no civil engineer, but why are the sewage tunnels above the clean water tunnels? If there were a leak, wouldn't the sewage seep into the clean water? Or is the clay thick enough to provide a good barrier?
- Serplat 14y agoI feel safer about it when looking at the scaled version: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/scale.html http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/scale.h...
- fratis 14y agoLike my mom always says, "Keep your poop close."
- devb 14y agoThe water tunnels operate at great pressure. Intrusion is extremely unlikely.
- nosse 14y agoIt doesn't matter much. Clean water tunnels have high pressure and good walls to keep anything out. Just plain soil getting into clean water tunnel can make loads of people really sick. If there is a clean water leak, they know it from pressure drop. If there would be a leak in sewage, the biggest problem would be ground water getting into the sewage tunnel, and flooding the water treatment plant. There is probably larger pressure in ground water than in the sewage. Ground water pressure drop can also make foundations of buildings to get looser, so they try to monitor leaks to the sewage (little leaking is btw quite common in older ceramic/concrete pipes). Sewage system works by gravity. That makes it sometimes really difficult for positioning the pipes. They must have either 2 - 7 % slope or they must be vertical. Uphill inside a sewage tube will gather all the shit and get stuck. With more than 7% slope the water runs too fast away from the pipe and leaves the shit behind, so again it will get stuck eventually. PS. I used to study civil.
- mrclownpants 14y agoThis has already been posted several times.
- ceejayoz 14y agoFirst time I've seen it.
- cs702 14y agoThe greatest depth shown in that graphic is 800 feet. At 10-12 feet per floor, that's equal to the height of a 67-80 story skyscraper. This means Manhattan has a 'mirror-image' city under the ground -- its 'citizens' are electric power, water, gas, and trash. I can't help but be in awe.
- maratd 14y agoWhat is even more amazing is that this mimics nature. Most trees have a root structure that is a rough mirror image of what's above ground!
- maxerickson 14y agoThe roots are generally much closer to the surface than the canopy is to the ground. Like within a meter versus dozens of meters.
- brianpan 14y agoWhoa, TIL http://www.sustland.umn.edu/implement/planting.html http://www.sustland.umn.edu/implement/planting.html
- greyboy 14y agoHaving lived in a very hurricane-prone area of the southeastern US for most of my life, I can verify that tree roots are not a mirror of the above-ground portion.
- natesm 14y agoThis isn't accurate for the entire city. At Astor Place, you can look through the sidewalk grates directly onto the tracks.
- evgen 14y agoNice image, but if you want to really have fun with a kid dig up the book "Underground" by David Macaulay. It peels back the layers beneath our feet and was a real eye-opener for me when I was younger. Actually grab anything by the same author and have fun...
- DanBC 14y agoTunnelling under cities has a number of odd problems. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1527202/How-top-secret-tunnellers-of-MI5-infiltrated-the-man-from-the-Pru.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1527202/How-top-secret-tunne...) I read an article, some years ago, about the problems of getting subterranean tunnels at a depth greater than 100 foot approved. As part of the process the plans get submitted to the security services, who then say "yes" or "no"; and you only get three attempts. I can't find the article (or anything similar) so maybe it's just myth. The Moscow subways are beautiful, but when I went (April '86) you were not allowed to take any photographs. I'm fascinated by the complex networks of public tunnels, secret tunnels, and abandoned tunnels.
- nine_k 14y agoNow taking photographs in Moscow subway ('metro') is allowed, and groups of tourists with cameras could be seen on most picturesque stations when I last visited it in 2011. Next to all the granite and marble, large bulkhead doors can be seen in many passages there. Currently all are open and not very visible, but certainly intended to insulate stations in a case of emergency, such as a nuclear attack.
- msutherl 14y agoSo, there are two of those deep underground water tunnels, one which runs down from the Bronx through Manhattan and another that runs from the Bronx through Queens and Brooklyn. These tunnels were completed in 1917 and 1935 respectively. How they managed to do this then is beyond me. Currently a third tunnel is being built and apparently it's "the largest construction project in New York history". The project was begun in 1970 and won't finish until 2020. It cost 6 billion. When the third tunnel comes online, it will allow for the other two tunnels to be shut down for repairs for the first time in their history. Scenes from Die Hard were filmed in Tunnel 3. This is big, long-term stuff folks. Makes me feel kind of proud of civilization.
- jontas 14y agoThe way the work is done is mind blowing[0]. The divers have to go so deep they need to live in helium tanks for more than a month, to make sure that their blood is sufficiently saturated with the gas. The helium is the only way they can dive deep enough, and yes, it does make their voices high pitched the entire time they are in there. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/nyregion/23tunnel.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/nyregion/23tunnel.html?pag...
- jakeonthemove 14y agoThat's amazing - I wonder how the work is progressing now? I didn't even know you could breathe any inert gas as long as it has enough oxygen in it until I read this article...
- DanBC 14y agoIt is an amazing achievement. 3 men per mile died digging tunnel number 1 - 25% of the workers. (http://www.flypmedia.com/content/life-underground http://www.flypmedia.com/content/life-underground) >Generations of sandhogs have accepted anonymity and danger as part of the job: 25 percent of those working on a tunnel in 1890 lost their lives; during a three-year stretch excavating Tunnel No. 2, 60 died. That’s three men for every mile of tunnel. Although the introduction in 1970 of a 13,200-volt pneumatic drill that sinks 10-foot holes into the rock has reduced the dangers facing the sandhogs, excavation of the first 25 miles of City Water Tunnel No. 3 cost the lives of 23 workers.
- Alex3917 14y agoFor those interested in this sort of stuff, there is a documentary called Dark Days that's all about the homeless people who live in the NYC subway system. It was available on iTunes the last time I checked.
- kine 14y agoI love how this is both informative, very cool and a complete Internet relic. I can't remember the last time I saw a message where I had to choose whether I had Shockwave or not to continue. Nice find!
- ChuckMcM 14y agoIts a fascinating picture. I'd love to see one of the Bay Area, one of the cable technicians installing yet another fiber down the road outside our office joked that if you put big rockets at PAIX and MAE-WEST and launched, they would lift 'silicon valley' [1] into space on a net of fiber optic cables. Of course no mention of "Beauty and the Beast" [2] which took place in a pretty fanciful world under New York city. Given the expense these days of tunneling I wonder if we've reached a peak of complexity underground for now. [1] Actually only the parts between San Jose and Palo Alto but it was the imagery not the accuracy they were going for. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_%281987_TV_series%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_%281987_T...
- Tashtego 14y agoIf you like this, you'll love Kate Ascher's The Works: Anatomy of a City (http://www.amazon.com/The-Works-Anatomy-Kate-Ascher/dp/0143112708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344621713&sr=8-1&keywords=the+works http://www.amazon.com/The-Works-Anatomy-Kate-Ascher/dp/01431...). It's slightly out of date (but much more up to date than the OP!). And if you like that, you'll REALLY love Brian Hayes' Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape (http://www.amazon.com/Infrastructure-Field-Guide-Industrial-Landscape/dp/0393329593/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344621793&sr=1-1&keywords=infrastructure http://www.amazon.com/Infrastructure-Field-Guide-Industrial-...). It's porn for people who like to try to figure out what the random towers in a chemical plant do, or how the electrical station you just passed on the interstate works.
- _delirium 14y ago> try to figure out what the random towers in a chemical plant do Tangential, but that phrasing reminds me of this article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3390719 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3390719
- siculars 14y agoHere is an interesting Subway chart from 1904 with a depth chart. http://talk.nycsubway.org/perl/read?subtalk=589316 http://talk.nycsubway.org/perl/read?subtalk=589316
- chermanowicz 14y agothis is incredible!
- donohoe 14y agoFor the record I first got a link to this page in 1997 or 1998. Its a timeless page.
- evansolomon 14y agoA friend of mine made a very cool documentary called Under City that you'd probably like if you're into this kind of stuff. http://vimeo.com/18280328 http://vimeo.com/18280328
- lobster_johnson 14y agoNaive question, but are things like power, gas, water, TV cables and steam always buried like this (requiring digging to make repairs or modifications), or are there cities/systems where they are laid in human-accessible tunnels? Seems like it would be more practical, albeit more expensive.
- nosse 14y agoIn Helsinki they have human accessible tunnels because the whole city is on bedrock and there is not much soil above it. It's just way too hard to make tunnels to rock so small that people can't go there, so they're forced to be more accessible. Tv, gas and power can be digged relatively shallow and I have not hear of maintenance tunnels for them when there is no solid rock to deal with. With sewers they usually put vertical wells to it in every corner. That makes the whole system more accessible. Often they put empty plastic tubes to new buildings just in case. It's not very hard to get something crawling there when new Internet comes to house.
- jyturley 14y agoThis was absolutely fascinating. It reminds me of Tokyo's underground sewage system--considered the largest in the world: http://surfwithberserk.com/the-largest-sewage-system http://surfwithberserk.com/the-largest-sewage-system
- dmhdlr 14y agoBLDGBLOG is a gold-mine for these kind of things. http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/ http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/