Houston, Texas also has an extensive underground tunnel system connecting large parts of the downtown business district and government buildings. It's a godsend during hot, swampy summers when commuting by foot at street level guarantees being soaked in sweat within a block or two, and is probably the most popular spot to head for lunch in the downtown area.
One interesting factor here is that aside from the portions serving government buildings, the tunnel system has grown organically as each piece is constructed and maintained by the owner of the building above. Direct tunnel access from a building is considered a major perk for employees and drives up commercial rent prices in each section's associated building.
While the Chicago Pedway is interesting, it is not extensive. The most interesting part of it is a relatively tiny section of mixed use commercial including hotels. It’s not useful to the bulk of downtown workers on a day to day.
This + when I lived there (2015-17), large segments of the Pedway would close at seemingly arbitrary hours, making it pretty common to have to head back to street level anyway to get between, say, Millennium Station and the State/Lake L stop outside of core business hours.
+1. Very functional and mostly clean system. Not that Montrealers are afraid of cold. Not sure how many businesses are still operating there post-pandemic.
Some cities in Japan have large underground pedestrian tunnel systems, too. In Tokyo, the most extensive might be around Shinjuku Station [1], though there’s also a large one around Tokyo Station that is connected through a series of tunnels to a smaller one around Yurakucho and Ginza [2]. I walked the entire length of the latter one snowy day about twenty-five years ago. Fukuoka and Sapporo also have underground passageways and malls in the city center.
My favorite is the maze of tunnels in the Umeda area of Osaka [3]. It includes a lot of retail as well as sometimes obscure connections through the basements of buildings. The bar- and restaurant-lined corridors under the slightly rundown Osaka Eki Mae buildings are especially fun to explore [4, 5].
I used to live in the middle of the "The east side" and the pedway is really cool. If you're brave, there is way more walking complexity than just the pedway. Upper right on the map has 3 levels of streets and the bridges have 2 levels(with pedestrian sidewalks). Its kind of dark and seedy to walk on the bottom levels. At the middle level you can walked to the river walk which is nice. Going to the lake is nice. Really no retail underground, except for Billy Goat Tavern on the other side of the river. There are the ghosts of the Blues Brothers driving by on Wacker...
I live across the street from a pedway entrance, and commute to work via the Metra Electric from Millenium Station, so on rainy days, I sometimes take the extra few minutes to go through the pedway, but usually I walk the two blocks outside instead since it's substantially faster.
One time on a particularly cold day I found occasion to take the Pedway all the way to the City Clerk to pick up my daughter's birth certificate...
They are great as a way to avoid extreme weather on the surface (cold in Rochester's and New York's case, hot in Taipei's and Hong Kong's case) and car traffic.
Hong Kong takes things a step further in that it's actually hard to get around at ground level. Many streets don't have pedestrian crossings and there are barriers to prevent jaywalking. I'm not a fan honestly.
One of the interesting things about the Hong Kong system is that unlike many places with this pedway system, the terrain gets quite steep quite quickly, and so using the pedway systems may result in the same or fewer level changes than using the street network.
Great way to avoid extreme weather... if you're part of the working class. Most of these pedways are private property acting as a public space, so any undesirables can be ejected.
We need to stop the privatization of our public spaces.
Most private underground pedestrian tunnels are basements of existing buildings. Do you think the government should be using tax payer money to be cease/buy basements instead? Seems like a really odd use of resources just to not be able to kick out people who aren’t using the path for the intend purpose… but more so: Seems like something most local governments in North America would be too inefficient to handle without it turning into a project that takes 50 years and millions of dollars to complete 1 mile.
From @smallmouth's message below ("filthy dirty mess in disrepair and reeking of powerful weed, and fresh human feces and urine.") it sounds like you should be a lot happier now.
Readit News
One interesting factor here is that aside from the portions serving government buildings, the tunnel system has grown organically as each piece is constructed and maintained by the owner of the building above. Direct tunnel access from a building is considered a major perk for employees and drives up commercial rent prices in each section's associated building.
https://downtownhouston.org/experience/downtown-tunnels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pedway
I've never heard of this, and it's interesting, but the Wikipedia page has way more info than the PDF there.
Wikipedia submissions are fine if there really isn't another interesting article out there, but we prefer a non-generic source where possible.
[0]https://www.skywaymyway.com/
I grew up in Chicago and lived in Montreal for a while. Theirs is WAAY better than Chicago's.
https://www.uwgb.edu/UWGBCMS/media/Maps/files/concourse-map....
It is very close to the eponymous Green Bay and the wind can be very cold if you are outside for any time in some parts of winter.
https://www.dsm.city/departments/engineering_-_division/skyw...
https://www.experiencerochestermn.com/planning-tools/getting...
https://admissions.rochester.edu/blog/navigating-the-tunnels...
My favorite is the maze of tunnels in the Umeda area of Osaka [3]. It includes a lot of retail as well as sometimes obscure connections through the basements of buildings. The bar- and restaurant-lined corridors under the slightly rundown Osaka Eki Mae buildings are especially fun to explore [4, 5].
[1] https://yamap.com/activities/2821503/article
[2] https://nativemoriokan.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-1059.html
[3] http://umedachikagai.web.fc2.com
[4] http://osakaekimaebirumap.web.fc2.com
[5] https://th-page.net/umeda/ekimae_izakaya.html
One time on a particularly cold day I found occasion to take the Pedway all the way to the City Clerk to pick up my daughter's birth certificate...
https://data.cityofchicago.org/Transportation/Pedway-Routes/...
Rochester MN: https://www.experiencerochestermn.com/planning-tools/getting...
Taipei Taiwan: https://pqvst.com/2023/05/28/taipei-underground/
New York NY near the World Trade Center: (can't find an up-to-date map or article)
Hong Kong near Central area: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design...
They are great as a way to avoid extreme weather on the surface (cold in Rochester's and New York's case, hot in Taipei's and Hong Kong's case) and car traffic.
Hong Kong takes things a step further in that it's actually hard to get around at ground level. Many streets don't have pedestrian crossings and there are barriers to prevent jaywalking. I'm not a fan honestly.
Hong Kong has one of the few examples of a public transport system consisting entirely of escalators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central%E2%80%93Mid-Levels_esc...
We need to stop the privatization of our public spaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_city
https://www.mtl.org/en/experience/guide-underground-city-sho...