If you’ve got to get to the scene of an accident in a traffic-jammed tunnel, you’ve got to have your own lane of traffic. New York tunnels had such a lane with a dedicated tunnel car decades ago.
Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s before solid science and research to the harmful effects of carbon monoxide poisoning were known, if the port authority wanted to find and direct traffic in an area of that had an accident, they sent out one of these cool rail cars that hugged the side of the tunnel, complete with its own dedicated track. Called Catwalk cars, these electric tunnel cars had room for one police officer and perhaps a few tools to assist motorists and nothing else.
I’ve found and collected a couple of images from around the web and posted them for you in a gallery below.
The first two photos show one of the earliest Catwalk cars built by American automobile juggernaut of the time, Packard. Believe it or not, this one’s totally electric and was more than likely directly powered by an electrified rail on which it ran. This catwalk car serviced the Holland Tunnel.
Untapped Cities did a wonderful piece with a bit of info on these cars,
The electric catwalk car was launched in 1955. The car was 2 feet wide with a swivel seat, so you could drive in either direction. Push buttons controlled the speed–either 6 or 12 miles per hour, with a 240-volt, 3 horsepower motor. As The New York Timeswrites “the catwalk car was the fastest, surest way through the tunnel, gliding blithely past the most epic traffic jams — equipped with no horn, because none was needed.”
The other three images are slightly more modern with an electric catwalk car built by the now-defunct Lennox Military Fabrication Solutions based out of Columbus, Ohio. This catwalk car looks slightly more modern but still very much a functional design. It’s not like these Port Authority catwalk cars won any design awards. This catwalk car serviced the Lincoln Tunnel.
It’s hard to believe but these catwalk cars were used in service until 2011, but, up until that point, they were more than likely only used for tunnel maintenance purposes.
Today, modern cameras, electric signs directing the flow of cameras, and dedicated bus lanes now operate in a similar combined capacity as these catwalk cars did, to find, direct, and assist in the flow of traffic when cars get backed up for one reason or another.
At least one Lincoln Tunnel Catwalk car is preserved at the Hoboken Historical Museum to this day, so if you’re ever in that neck of the woods and are curious about these odd, one-of-a-kind-cars, you know where to look.
Source: Untapped Cities
