PENNSYLVANIA: Hole in the Ground

Back in 1917 the city of Philadelphia set to work to build a subway line down Locust Street, which runs through Philadelphia's main business district. The resulting excavations kept large parts of Locust Street in a turmoil until work on the project was interrupted in 1918 by World War I shortages. After the war, digging started again, and the tunnel was finally finished in 1933 at a cost of $6,000,000. But what with the Depression and World War II, the city just never got around to putting the Locust Street subway into operation.

About two years ago, however, the city government went to work on Locust Street again, spending another $2,500,000 in the process. Last week the first trains finally ran through the Locust Street tunnel (providing a high-speed connection between the business district and Camden, N.J. via the Delaware River Bridge). But nobody had any such hopes for another ancient and expensive Philadelphia subway hole in the ground, the Arch Street tunnel, used only as a storage place for rivets and old rails since its excavation in 1917-18.