If only New York had a series of underground tubes connecting different parts of the cities. We could put trains in those tubes!
He despised public transportation (because he never learned to drive, he always had a driver) .He actively designed bridges (over highways) to be purposely low so that the highways could not have bus lanes. When he was building the highways and bridges, he knew that the solution was to combine them with subway lines to reduce traffic congestion but refused to because he was so arrogant and power hungry. His solution was always to widen existing highways or build more highways, and public transportation ridership went from very high in the 1920s to very low in the 1950s/60s.
He did build a lot of stuff, but you could argue that NYC in 2021 is a worse place because of it -- and you really could argue that if you had grandparents (or great-grandparents) that were evicted by his housing policies or construction projects.
That was to keep black New Yorkers from a white beach in, I think, Brooklyn, according to the story I saw.
As to the effort to maintain a low vacuum, that has relatively minimal associated energy costs assuming the track is reasonably air tight.
just look at the energy cost and how much a pump can do in a reasonable time period vs the volume of a large distance tube.
and we'll move on from this when we develop cheap brain implants that are even worse
It would basically remove cars from cities, without actually removing cars from cities. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
(I'm kidding. Chicago has a mildly extensive two level street system, and there are just doors in the "basements" of buildings that open up to the subterranean streets. I always thought it was neat, but was also afraid to walk around on the lower level. Also, the top level wasn't parks, it was just more car lanes.)
What is this? An underground metro for ANTS!?! It needs to be at least twice as large!!