Including over 5,400 linear feet of material, the New York Transit Museum’s archive holds innumerable stories waiting to be told. In the series, Mining the Archives, join Museum staff to uncover transit history.  

2024 marks the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the New York City Board of Transportation, the first time that governance of New York City’s mass transit was centralized and localized; thereby creating an entity to which New Yorkers could air grievances and offer opinions. This edition of Mining the Archives features early proposals from ordinary people to the Board, detailing ideas to improve the transit system. The recommendations range from the practical to the fantastical, and offer insight into the specific concerns, inventive spirit, and amateur technological prowess of New Yorkers who lived a century ago.