Where did all of the American Canals go? 

It was not that astonishing. When the water table is as high as it is in the Netherlands, a canal is easier than anything else. In the process of removing the highway, they also destroyed a lot of the historically fabric of the city because it needed to be "modernized"...

Also it’s not that surprising that if your remove roads traffic “simply vanished.” That doesn’t mean what replaces it is better

Great video about the project by BicycleDutch: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fePpwYCs_JM.html Before/after comparison by Bouwput: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jNvZNKW02K4.html

@@GhoulishCop Well it's only not surprising if you're also not surprised that adding more car infrastructure _increases_ traffic rather than alleviating it, which was the original misguided reason for wanting to replace the canal by 4-6 lanes of car traffic in a historic city center.

@@ckm-mkc well, that canal was originally there before the motorway. So which historic parts were destroyed then?

Hopefully you can work to restore some of our canals, even if it's just around your town. Would be neat to see narrowboating introduced to America.

Hope it is going great I feel a rebirth of alternative travel that require far less resources to use is on the horizon even if it takes a lot of work America would prosper even more than currently. Highways need repaved and maintained far more than canals which in many cases just need some dredging or cleaning of junk within.

Great comparison. I'll eventually make a video on streetcars because they deserve multiple.

Streetcars and interurban rail lines were put out of business in the '20's and 30's by Model A Fords and paved two lane highways. Neither can take you door to door, and they limit the times you can go places.

@@ffjsb not sure if youre serious or trolling

ffjsb is right though.

@@dziltener no: 1) i can use my time more efficient in public transport (try sleeping while driving a car, lol) 2) not everyone even wants to drive a car all the time 3) City car traffic always sucks 4) Streetcars, busses and bikes can transport faaar more people than cars per unit of space used, see urbanist.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83454714d69e2017d3c37d8ac970c-800wi 5) streetcars have a longer life expectancy than cars or Busses, 40 years are easily reached and even longer operation times for a single vehicle is not uncommon. In an completely rural environment you are obviously car dependant but anywhere in a bigger town or city you should be able to easily reach your destination by foot/bike or public transit. Any more questions?

If memory serves, the UK had 5500 mi of navigable canals at their peak, and are now down to "only" about 2500 mi of them. Which is about 2500 times more than the US has.

Getting bomb to hell and losing a large number of the male population helped them survive too lol

@@poissonpuerile8897 New York state still has 4 working canals.

@martinpook5707 >"UK is a very small country with a high population density which does make a difference."< EXACTLY! Railroads were much more practical over long distances and varying elevations Also US canals in the north were closed all winter.

I grew up in Akron. And I've been to the Gorge Metro Park many times, as well as Firestone Metro Park. I've enjoyed reading your comments. I still have family in the Akron area.

I used to take my students to the Lock House for years as a part of their Ohio Social Studies lesson. Since I've stopped teaching the Lock House has undergone some major renovations and additions, and I'm very proud of the efforts at preserving the unique history of the region.

@@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts I believe I've been there on a field trip way back when. I was in the 5th or 6th grade. When and where did you teach? Thanks for responding.

Lock 3

St Marys Ohio has a reproduction of a canal lock and canal boat .

problem is that there is generally infrastructure laid over the dead remains of the old Canals. On the Ohio and Erie, Roads and Railways used the old path of the canal as a route, because it was so flat and maintained, the rails and asphalt were laid right over the old waterways

At one time recently there where several such organizations, I was aware of the Indiana Canals Society, the Ohio Canal Society and the American Canal Society. It's been awhile and I'm no longer certain of the names. Be that as it may be, these groups were all rather small.

@@jooberboober4609 what happens if it rains does the roads get flooded ?

They exist here, and are ignored

In the UK it was small groups of enthusiasts who got together and convinced the authorities that canal preservation would be good for local economies and so parliament passed laws forbidding building on any derelict canal or dismantling of any canal infrastructure since the 1960's. Since then many canals have been restored by local enthusiasts and many more are under restoration right now (e.g. Shrewsbury, Welshpool, Litchfield, Grantham) but it takes decades because when the canals were abandoned the land was sold back to the original landowners and so has to be bought back again bit by bit. But the Govt are onside, ditto local area authorities, housing developers, lottery grants, English Heritage. Road systems have been raised or moved and when they built the brand new M6 toll motorway 15 years ago they also built the viaduct over it even though the restoration of that canal is still a long way off complete. Having a waterway at the end of your garden increases your property value by 15%!

I hope Jersey had the sense to do it one day.

I’m pretty sure that was in Utrecht, not Amsterdam...?

@@timpauwels3734 i am Not sure

@@burgerpommes2001 Tim is correct: bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2020/09/16/utrecht-corrects-a-historic-urban-design-mistake/

Not in Amsterdam but in Utrecht. And also in Breda

The UK continued to use the canals for haulage of goods (despite competition from rail) right up until the end of WW2. Afterwards it the system was nationalised as British Waterways and limped on in a declining state maintained by a militant group of volunteers led by the charity organisation, the Inland Waterways Association. The leisure industry then slowly took off making canals popular enough to encourage further investment in them. Check out Birmingham (the original city not that copycat in Alabama) which has a huge number of canals running through it.

@@samuelsmith6281 The Morris canal was shut down in 1924. It had it's time but by the 20th century it had no use whatsoever. I live near where it flowed into the Hudson river and from that spot heading roughly 15 km north along the river there were 7 rail yards used by 6 different railways. Canal traffic just couldn't compete.

The Morris canal was an amazing piece of engineering, it ran like 130 miles from the Delaware river to Newark, and it had to go up almost 1000 ft down to sea level. It lasted until the 1920s, but really after the civil war it was dead, it was a nostalgia thing. It was owned by the DLW railroad from the 1850s on. The problem was the railroads could carry more,faster, once railroads came into their own in the 1840s their time was numbered. They thought about keeping it as a recreational canal, the problem was the cost of maintaining it and who would do it. Back then the thought of it being a valuable recreation was just not thought of. Not to mention the end of it, through Jersey City and Newark and further west it was rapidly growing, the route the canal took was valuable land. The Newark Subway was built on part of the old bed, route 80 east to 21 around the base of Garret Mountain in Paterson is the old canal bed. I wish they could restore even a portion of it. I walk through Waterloo Village almost every week ( another sad story, most of the buildings there are not long for this world), and it is fun to imagine it as it was England was different, the landscape and such made it so railroads couldn't handle everything and unlike in the US railroads couldn't be built easily alongside the canal right of way. The industrial revolution hit the UK early and the canals were built long before the railroads, 50 years or more, they had a large network of canals before the railroads. Businesses were built along the canals, do they had entrenched businesses the railroads could not offer good service to since they weren't close. In the US the canals were built to transport commodities like coal or iron ore or produce and the like, by the time the US industrialized the way england had, the railroads were already around and industries were built around the railroads. Steel mill would have sidings, factories,wearhouses, etc. The sheer number if railroads, in part thank to the generous subsidies they got from the government, meant that shippers of commodities had access to rail,too. Englands canals were active basically until after WWII, though they had been in decline for years, it still was used. With the decline of industry and trucking canals became surplus. But, the canals already had people using it for recreation so many of the canals were being used. The government already owned the canals by then, so it was a lot easier for public pressure to keep them open. What is cool is they are constantly re opening sections of canals that had been filled in, re establishing links and even creating new ones. There is even talk of building a 60 mile link to connect the British to Scottish canal network.

@@njlauren Yes, it's telling when you see pictures of the Morris Canal/Hudson river location. On the south bank was the Lehigh Valley RR yard and just past them huge Jersey Central yard. In some shots you can see a line of cars holding more freight on one track then canal boats could haul in a week. Not to mention the yard up in Edgewater serviced by the Susquehanna RR which was a purely coal hauling operation.

The river exists in its current state as a direct result of canal building though. They literally reversed the flow of the river. Goose Island wasn't always an island. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Where there is a will there is a way

Dude, short-sea shipping could solve so many of our problems today.

Only if it's cargo that doesn't have to be anywhere soon. There's a reason the railroads put canals on a back burner back in the 1800s

@@somebonehead For certain bulk cargo, it can be something of a boon. If it's something that needs to be point to point there in 2-3 days or so from the word go, it's not going to work out. There's a reason that the traditional coastal trade was essentially dead by the 1960s.

@@jpjpjp453 That's not a fair comparison, railroads deliberately sabotaged canals in the US by building low bridges over them. But yeah, short-sea shipping for bulk, rail for speed.

@@somebonehead nice lie and bull crap. I seen inter state hwy bridges lower over the water then Rail road bridges. By Fed gov law 90% of the time Min Hight for barges 50 ft. Min hight for great lakes 150 ft for ocean ships 200 ft . if hight can not by meet then draw bridges swing bridges lift bridges.

The Industrial Revolution started in England, not the US. You're right, you're not a Historian.

@@oldmanfromscenetwentyfour8164 I just said it started earlier in England. Maybe you took "they" to mean US because I said ' 'colonies.' I'm American, so I meant England was first. Pronouns.

@@stevek8829 Maybe it's because you're not effective and clear in your writing. Would you like me to diagram your sentence structure? You may know how to text but you don't know how to write.

@@oldmanfromscenetwentyfour8164 and to think that I came back and said something nice to someone of demonstrated stupidity. Only you could assume anyone would say the Industrial Revolution started first in the US. Everyone learns that in early grades. But you, Mr. RU-vid genius, have to play professor when it's not needed. You're a rude little troll, and that's worse than being stupid--enjoy both.

@@stevek8829 You flatter yourself. When were you "nice" to anyone?

Regarding canals I think a lot of them are maintained for their cultural and historical and touristic value, not for transport. Then I'm sure it really depends where and for what function, I don't doubt this captain knows more about rivers than me, I'm just giving the perspective I know. Regarding (passenger)trains there are indeed some lines that were abandoned because of small throughput and low profitability, small rural lines obviously. But its nothing comparable to the US scraping train infrastructure to profit cars cars. The railway infrastructure and trains are being actively developed but as I said most of the money is for the main corridors. As an example I took a small train (I really mean small) that rides through small cities and villages. The train is new, comfortable and the fare costs 1€ on the whole line (~40 to 50km). There is no way this is profitable.

Actually Lowell Mass has a canal finished before the Erie Canal…. The Erie Canal was the first canal to connect western waterways to the Atlantic… Where the canals in Lowell were used to power mills…

@@rogerdean5313 Thanks, good to know.

Yes. If you watched the video he isn't arguing that we should replace our freight rail and trucking with narrowboat shipping (which is obsolete), but rather preserve or restore them to remain as recreational, historical, and aesthetic assets

That fuckup really made it obvious that I'm from Jersey haha

tunnels. the C&O canal has them.

Also lifts.

Also funicular railways, carrying the boats either in caissons or on cradles. Sounds crazy, but it was done at Foxton (UK) and is still done in a few places in Europe. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DqFdkRFqfMU.html

@@glenagalt The Morris canal in NJ took another approach, they used incline planes that had cradles the boat road on up or down the plane ( as you can imagine, one went up as the other went down). They were powered by scotch turbines using water from the canal. They used locks as well, but given the elevations they had to deal with the planes were more practical.

@@njlauren I think we may be talking about the same thing, "funicular" being another term for cable-hauled inclined railway.

Different size. The main continental canals are much wider than the narrowboat canals or the irish canals. Or the one the author shows. It also helps that they are national projects. Oh and the europeans have no problems ripping up or dropping old channels and locks. GB and IR are exceptions not the rule. The Dortmund Ems or Mittelland canal in germany look quite different today than they did in the 70s ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PazymWs3o-c.html

Old canal bed in Newark, NJ was the Morris and Essex Canal, street laid over the subway was/is Raymond Boulevard, and the narrator of the vintage Delaware and Raritan footage was author, storyteller and WOR-AM radio personality Jean Shepherd.

High tech when they were built

Canals here in the UK also run next to rivers most of the time. I guess it's cultural unfamiliarity with them that makes Americans point that out as if it's a strange thing. Rivers run at the bottom, flattest part of a valley, so yes the canal will hug the river where useful. It was also often the case that the river attracted water-powered industry and it was of interest to the canal builders to serve these places. The network of waterways would substitute a navigable river on the occasion that was possible, but part of the genius of an industrial canal wasn't just that you could make a boat go where water doesn't want to go, it was that it was a stable and reliable system all year round. They wouldn't flood, surge, dry up or be affected by other seasonal changes that afflict rivers. In the UK canals aren't considered obsolete, they're considered repurposed. Industrial use has given way to leisure and tourism use (which generates tax revenue). Towns are proud of their locks, wharves and aqueducts. They also tend to be a haven for wildlife. Perhaps you would need to actually see a living canal before you understood why a town or city would want one back in operation.

@@CountScarlioni I agree totally, having fallen in love with some of the narrowboat channels on you tube I see what the charm is. One of the channels, Foxes Afloat, often has the history of things like the Alderson boat lift and the engineers of the canals like Telford and Brunel. Ppl are weird in the US, they talk about tax dollars ( the CRT in England as far as I know is private non profit) and then want the state or city to spend billions on a sports stadium that ends up losing money for the state while making the sports owners a ton of money....

I live along one of these canals near Macedon, NY. I know they both still support commercial and pleasure traffic to this day. I didn't know about the cruise ship, because it doesn't come this far West. Rochester, NY diverted its section of the Erie canal south of town at great expense to put I-490 through the center of town (and tore up a busy trolley line for I-590, but that's another story). With a little thought, and the money they spent on the diversion, I'm betting they could have had both, while not cutting a lot of streets that used to go through. Whatever the case, the canal is a good thing for the area because the water adds to the character, as Alan says. Now the NYS Thruway Authority owning the canals is another story ... Oh, and it is simply "Erie Canal" and "Oswego Canal", not the mishmash with the older "Barge" designation.

@@bradarmstrong3952 yea since the Niagara Prince was retired there have been no full Erie Canal Cruises.

@@nordisk1874 I’m actually going on a pleasure cruise on the Colonial Belle on the Erie canal from Palmya to Newark later this week (they normally run from Fairport to Pittsford, but there is a temporary repair being done West of Palmya so they can’t get to their normal facility - cruisin’ on a different part of the canal, first rate stuff!

As is the Great Dismal Swamp Canal between the Chesapeake and Pamlico sound in NC. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal is still in use with commercial traffic, but it is a much larger body of water.

yes - you have a water supply for the canal but the canal water levels remain constant regardless of seasons and storms.

You'd probably also enjoy the Appalachian trail video too if you like this one

Maybe that person really likes trains. If I had the opportunity to build a nice house on an abandoned rail line, I would do it.

I don't know the specifics of the situation with the house, but if someone built a house on the alignment of a former railway, there's is a pretty good probability that segment of the right of way had been vacated, meaning legally relinquished to the landholder. Which means that there *is* no right of way there any more, meaning that regardless of whether the house was built there or not, the trail couldn't go through there, because the right of way no longer exists there.