On Sunday, February 15, 2015 at 9:06:48 PM UTC-5, Michael Finfer wrote:   
      
   > There was a crossing on PATH just west of Journal Square until the early    
   > 70's, and I think the last crossings on the Canarsie Line were closed in    
   > the late 60's or early 70's.   
      
   The Canarsie Line crossing, at 105th St, was the only one in the NYC subway   
   system in modern times.  The street itself was a back street and lightly   
   traveled, and the crossing well protected.  I believe under the Dual Contracts   
   almost existing lines were    
   upgraded to elevated, cut, or subway, even if the area served was still   
   rural.  There are old photos of el stations in the middle of empty fields; but   
   once the lines opened, developers quickly followed and built apartments in the   
   Bronx and Brooklyn.     
   Many immigrants living in the Lower East Side took advantage of the new subway   
   service and affordable housing and moved to those apartments.  (Though I don't   
   know how adults could manage living on the fourth or fifth floor of a building   
   without an    
   elevator; that's a lot of steps to carry up groceries or a baby.)   
      
      
   SIRT also had lots of crossings, I think all closed by 1970.   
      
   The LIRR used to have many more, but grade crossing elimination programs of   
   the 1950s onward got rid of many of them.  The program also replaced quaint   
   stations with ugly concrete viaducts, but made the trains and roads safer.    
   (Unfortunately, during one    
   of the projects, a guautlet track and missed signal resulted in a very bad   
   accident.)   
      
   One of Moses' lesser known projects was to elevate the LIRR Rockaway line,   
   which many years later became a city subway route.   
      
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