Untapped Cities

To mention the Spanish and Italian way: there are public toilets, some on the street (not that many, mostly near playgrounds), most in public buildings, rail and bus stations and the like. They are always free to use. Condition can be from very good to very poor, depends on the area and who looks after the toilets, mostly.

Aside from that, every place serving drinks or foods with the possibility to eat in the premises must have fully equipped toilets, and those are usually in good condition, so what most people do is walk into a bar or restaurant and use those. Some people just ask if it's OK to use the toilet, others will buy an espresso or bottle of water. Personally I ask and then pay for someone else's coffee or tip the barman, but I'm neither Spanish or Italian. Paid toilets are unknown there and would be seen with hostility. Toilets at shopping centres and motorway stops can always be used freely. Petrol stations and underground car parks also tend to have toilets that one can use, sometimes you have to ask for the key.

In France, it is mostly the same except that bar/restaurant toilets tend to be, let us say, a character building experience and being a different culture, the "let me use the toilet and I'll buy a bottle of water from you" thing does not quite work (apart from the water being at least €2.-) There are, however, a lot more public toilets, often the self-cleaning type (the French are big on automation, due to their awkward labour laws), and best of all,…

The whole reason the medallion system was created was because prior to the medallions, taxis were a real risk to the general public.

Nope, the reason it was created was because the taxi drivers where annoyed with the increase of competition during the Great Depression and started striking and destroying property until they got a monopoly over the business.

From the nyc.gov site: Widespread poverty prompted many New Yorkers to opt for less-expensive forms of transportation, decreasing the demand for taxis. This put many companies out of business and caused many cabdrivers to lose their jobs. The situation was made worse by the tactics of “wildcat” (unlicensed) taxis who used what some considered to be “underhanded tactics,” such as drastically lowering fares, to get more business. The situation in the taxi industry was dire; frustrated cabdrivers turned their anger into violent protest and the demands for industry regulation increased.

Another source: Striking taxi drivers was nothing new–the first strike took place in 1908, a year after the first taxi company was founded. But this strike had a hostile energy to it, as strikers went hunting for scabs to punish. As one driver put it, “the bastids that was scabbin’, we pulled the doors off their cabs.” Independent cab owners, who had nothing to gain by striking, had their windows smashed by blocks of ice and passengers thrown from their cabs. Police who tried restore order had their tires slashed and marbles thrown under…

TBMs are designed at a specific diameter, for the kind of soil to bore through, wear down quickly, and aren’t easily moved. It often isn’t worth it to take apart a TBM and reconstruct it elsewhere, even if you could find a customer wanting a tunnel of the same width through similar soil.

For long tunnels, it isn’t uncommon to have two TBMs that meet in the middle and are abandoned there (they bore a side tunnel long enough to contain the TBM, and the side tunnel is closed behind them)

For example, see https://untappedcities.com/2017/02/09/the-200-ton-tunnel-boring-machine-buried-below-park-avenue-used-for-east-side-access/:

”Burial of such a large machine was unprecedented in New York City, but is common practice abroad, reported the New York Times in 2011. The Spanish contracting company working on the project deemed it would be more cost effective to leave Seli in place. It was estimated that removal would cost millions and cause delays in existing construction projects. Dr. Michael Horodniceanu, the president of MTA Capital Construction, estimated at the time it would cost $9 million to remove Seli, which had cost somewhere between $6 to $8 million new.”

I'm not sure there's a significant difference between depths of most of the London and New York subway systems.

Most of the London Underground is cut-and-cover tunnels sitting just below ground level (2-6m). The Thames Tunnel is 24m below ground level. The deepest station is Bull & Bush, Hampstead, at 57m (180ft) underground:

https://londonist.com/2015/10/how-deep-does-london-go

https://londonist.com/london/transport/how-deep-is-your-commute-these-diagrams-show-the-depth-of-each-station

The NYC subway also uses extensive cut-and-cover routes, though deeper bores exist. The deepest station, at 191st St. (LRI) is 180 ft. (54m) below ground. About the same as the London Underground.

https://untappedcities.com/2013/06/26/deepest-highest-subway-stations-nyc/

https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Chapter_14:_Engineering_Features_of_the_New_York_Subway

New Yorkers love putting things in pipes, don't they? Not content with putting normal things like water, sewage, and gas in pipes, they apparently put steam in pipes, on Roosevelt Island they put a mix of rubbish and vacuum in pipes [1], they used to put the post in pipes [2], apparently they pipe rats to people's houses or something, occasionally once of them puts gunpowder in a pipe [3], and they even put themselves in pipes [4]. It's all very Freudian, they should talk to their therapist about it.

[1] https://www.untappedcities.com/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuristic-pneumatic-tube-trash-system/

[2] https://www.untappedcities.com/pneumatic-tube-mail-new-york-city/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Metesky

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway

In case this is hugged, this was a submission to the MTA's Open Data Challenge in November that won 'most creative storytelling'.

> Subway Stories is a series of vignettes that analyze open data to understand how New Yorkers work, enjoy themselves, and stay connected. The interactive visualization allows users to explore how different groups in NYC travel and effectively uses a complex dataset to glean insight into how folks move about the city

An article: https://www.untappedcities.com/new-map-of-one-billion-nyc-subway-rides-reveals-hidden-connections/