All of the New York Subways That Could Have Been

New Yorkers, next time you moan about how long your commute is (i.e., when your leave work today), don't make your complaints aimlessly. Aim them straight at the subway lines that could've taken you home faster if only they'd been built! To do so, Balance Media and WNYC's John Keefe offers this handy map of the 11 proposed-but-never-fully-built subway lines in New York overlaying the city's subway system as it actually exists today. The subways-in-the-sky include a bunch of outer-borough amenities, such as the two additional trains connecting Queens and Brooklyn and another connecting (gasp) Staten Island to the rest of the city. And lower Manhattan certainly gets some love as well, with three more lines of its own going to Brooklyn, including the fabled 2nd Avenue line the MTA has actually started building in the Upper East Side (no jinx). The map's fancy and interactive, with text bubbles explaining each nonexistent line, so you ought to head over to WNYC's website to play with it yourself. This writer's favorite is the proposed extension to the F train that would have run from Essex Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side through Williamsburg and down Utica Avenue in Brooklyn. Not connecting these neighborhoods is one of the greatest tragedies of New York civic planning on par with razing the original Penn Station not least because it would have meant getting from my apartment to work without a transfer. (No, it is a big deal. Ignorance was bliss.)