Tuesday, September 4, 2007

A Horsecar for Prospect Park?

A longshot, no doubt, but I love this idea:

A Prospect Park Horsecar. Horsecars -- streetcars pulled by horses -- were the original mass transit.... All a horsecar line would need ... is tracks set into the pavement and level with the road to allow automobiles to continue using the lane when the park was open to them. The horses could be stored, and a car garage could be built, somewhere in or adjacent to the Prospect Park Zoo. The track could follow the innermost of the two park roadway lanes, as the trolley does. But it would exit the park in the Willink Entrance near the intersection of Flatbush, Ocean, and Empire, cross Flatbush Avenue, run up the east side of Washington Avenue in the bed of a little-used sidewalk adjacent to the Botanic Garden, run in barrier separate right of way on the south side of Eastern Parkway, and re-enter the park at Grand Army Plaza. It would thus serve all the destinations the trolley does save the Children's Museum -- Central Library, Art Museum, Botanic Garden, Zoo (a short walk up Flatbush), Picnic House, Bandshell, Skating Rink, Audubon Center, and Lefferts Homestead, along with the Brighton (B, Q), Culver (F, G?), and IRT (2, 3 museum stop) subway lines and frequent B41 and B68 buses.

The horsecar itself could be a visual reproduction of an original inside and out, but could use modern materials and equipment -- like a stainless steel undercarriage to save weight, and pneumatic fail-safe emergency brakes powered by charged canisters for safety. A ride on a horsecar in Prospect Park could be the poor man’s version of a carriage ride in Central Park.

(It's inspired by this study (.pdf) which shows that the current trolley is kind of a joke.)

3 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Horsecars = horse shit. Not a good idea. Now maybe a proper electric trolley could be a nice addition to the park and surrounding communities.

Guilliaume said...

I don't car about the horse shit, it's just a bad idea. Who uis going to take this? I mean just take that free trolley instead. Prospect Park doesn't get a lot of tourists and let's keep it that way!

Anonymous said...

Trolley tracks on the park road would be a hazard for cyclists and roller skaters, essentially making that lane unusable for them. No more bike races!