From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Subject: Transit system names (was: The naming of the transit system...)
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 07:03:43 GMT

> BART = Bay Area Rapid Transit
> Does Fremont really have FART?

There actually is a FART; it's a rather scenic railway serving the
Swiss-Italian border area.  The name stands for Autonomous Railways
of the Ticino Region in Italian, and plays on the German word Fahrt
meaning "trip".
 
> Now, does anyone know if MUNI in SF is an acronym or just short for
> municipal?

Actually it's short for Municipal Railway, a name presumably dating
back to pre-bus days.

| In Montreal, we call our underground subway the METRO which is an actual
| French word for subway but we use it in the English language as well.
| And in London, England, if I am correct, the people over there call
| their subway the TUBE.

They do, and there's a somewhat interesting story behind that.  The
London Underground, to give it its official name, incorporates two
types of lines.

The older ones are now referred to as "subsurface" lines by transit
cognoscenti.  They are now designated the Circle, District, East London,
Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan Lines.  Where these lines go under-
ground, they were built almost entirely by "cut-and-cover" construction:
dig up the street to the width of the tunnel, build the tunnel structure,
and rebuild the street on top of it.  They were built by a number of
private companies, with various relationships to each other from friendly
to hostile.  The underground portions in central London were all opened
in the period from 1863 to 1884.

The first of these companies was the Metropolitan Railway, and it retained
that name until nationalization in the 1930's.  The common noun for subway
in French, metro, derives from the name of this company, by way of the
similarly named one which opened Paris's first subway in 1900.

(Conversely, the English word "bus" derives ultimately from a pun made
by a Frenchman.  Since the subway was invented in England and the bus
in France [specifically, by Pascal], it all seems quite fair.)

In 1863, the only practical type of propulsion for the Metropolitan
Railway was steam.  Special steam locomotives were built for the sub-
surface lines, so that they would release steam only when in the
open-air sections.  But they released smoke and fumes continuously,
and riding on the trains was always pretty unpleasant.  (Apparently
on the theory that it must therefore be good for you, it was promoted
as a treatment for asthma!)

The second generation of subway lines in London was the "deep-level
tube" lines.  London has the good fortune to lie on a thick bed of clay,
and these lines were constructed by sinking vertical shafts to reach
the clay and tunneling horizontally within it.  (The vertical shafts were
mostly used for elevators, but in later years after the escalator had been
invented, diagonal shafts for these had to be added to most of the stations
at considerable difficulty and expense.)

For reasons of economy the tunnels are circular (hence the name "tube"),
and relatively small, about 12 feet in diameter.  (The early ones were
even smaller, as little as 10 feet 2 inches, but later enlarged.)
The stations are also in tube tunnel, using larger tubes, and this gives
them their distinctive appearance.  The small size of the tunnels shows
most noticeably in the curved tops of the tube trains; another effect is
that the train floors are below the level of the top of the wheels, which
affects the seating arrangements much as it does in buses.  The tube
lines today are called the Bakerloo, Central, Jubilee, Northern,
Piccadilly, and Victoria Lines.

The first of the tube lines was opened in 1890, which was fortunate
timing, because practical electric trains were just appearing then.
(The builders had originally planned to use cable haulage, like the
San Francisco cable cars.)  This line and all subsequent tube lines
have always been electrically operated.

The early tubes, which opened across central London from 1890 to 1907,
were built by a number of private companies.  They wanted to distinguish
themselves from the less pleasant subsurface lines, and one way they did
this was to stress the word "tube".  For instance, some stations had
big TUBE signs on them in neon lights.

By 1906, however, competition had forced the subsurface lines to convert
from steam to electricity.  And several of the various lines, both tube
and subsurface, had fallen under common ownership.  By about 1908,
the owning company decided to stop promoting the tube lines as a
separate entity, but to instead promote both groups of lines as one
system, called the Underground.  And this name remains official today,
now under government ownership.

The owners both failed and succeeded in changing popular usage.  Ordinary
users no longer make any distinction between the tube and subsurface lines
...but now they call them *both* the Tube.
-- 
Mark Brader					"Domine, defende nos
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto				 Contra hos motores bos!"
utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com				    -- A. D. Godley

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