This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published September 18, 2009 and can be found here.
No it's not for people with one eye. Monocle is a global current affairs magazine (published in the U.K.) with a sharp aesthetic and an editorial tone that suggests we can build a better world if we just think creatively about global problems. And wouldn't you know, they took notice of our little Rochester Subway map in their September issue. Brilliant!
Sasha Issenberg writes "Overnight America's cities have been blessed with some of the finest transport systems in the world - and without a single cent of Obama's stimulus package. In Rochester, New York, graphic designer Michael Governale sells posters of an underground tram his city abandoned 50 years ago." In the article, entitled "Dream Machines", Issenberg also mentions the Cincinnati Transit Map for Optimists - a tongue-in-cheek T-shirt design "that shows five train lines in a region that currently has only a dismal bus network." Cincinnati, like Rochester, also has the distinction of abandoning a subway system. Although theirs was left for dead in 1925--before it even got going. Atleast we got to ride ours for a while. You can read more about Cinci's abandoned subway system on your own time.
So thank you Monocle, and thank you Mr. Issenberg, for shining the spotlight on us dreamers in Rochester. Even if it is only for September