manhattan transfer

I started reading Stilgoe's _Metropolitan Corridors_, and fairly early on in the book I was arrested by the description of Manhattan Transfer. My first reaction, whoa, train to boat to train, that must have sucked. My second reaction, whoa, I think I've run into that kind of annoying connection somewhere else, too. My third reaction, hey, Dos Passos named a novel after that? Wacky. And finally, wasn't there a band named that?

The wikipedia disambiguation page for Manhattan Transfer captures all that, adds a couple I had never heard of, and reminded me of the Watchmen connection.

Geez.

grand central terminal, or, more from stilgoe and wikipedia

Stilgoe quotes an article in the Christian Science Monitor Nov 1, 1928 by Franklin Snow: "...the steady flow of some 100,000 passengers and another 100,000 visitors to the shops, restaurants, and other attractions."

Look, it's a number!

Now, back in 1928, Pennsylvania Station was also serving through and commuters and Grand Central Terminal was serving through and commuters. These days, Penn is for Amtrak, and Grand Central Terminal is Metro North. But let's compare these apples and oranges anyway, via wikipedia entry for GCT, in the statistics section: "Commuters About 125,000 a day Visitors over 500,000 a day."

Other interesting observations from the entry: wow, there was an earlier 9/11. Who knew? Ok, probably everyone but me. For some reason, I thought it was interesting that that train station bombing occurred in the year between the two years that Moluccans hijacked trains in the Netherlands. In clicking around wikipedia, I also noted that Amtrak ridership and revenue has increased for six years in a row now. The route breakdown on where the big increases are happening also clarifies why Steiner is expecting great things of rail in the Midwest: it's one of those easy predictions, in that it is already happening, so you can be confident of your correctness.