Transcontinental Subway Ruins

Purpose / Function

The Transcontinental Subway was meant to replace the United State's dated and inefficient transport system with one that was not only faster, but more eco-friendly. It never saw completion of its goal to connect every major city in the continental United States, however it did manage to reach one third of the United States before being abandoned.
The subway system still sees some modern use from The Underground, a loose organization of Omnia and their allies, who often used lines and segments not properly mapped or known as shelter. Black Markets are also known to crop up in the lines along with horror enthusiast festivals, haunted history tours, and speakeasies.

Alterations

Several lines that were still under construction during the dragon attacks appear to have been altered heavily and had their construction added to by people other than the original crews. It is believed that due to many lines having had their equipment abandoned in them during construction, refugees may have attempted to use it to continue boring the tunnels through the bedrock themselves. Most often, sites where this theory is proposed to have taken place are lines that had caved in during antiquity, often with human remains found alongside the equipment.
Graffiti, both done in modern times and antiquity, is extremely common in the tunnels. Many areas have massive murals of graffiti that has been used as landmarks since human times, and some feature clear signatures left by street artists and refugees spread over thousands of miles, allowing historians to document the travels of individuals from thousands of years ago. Thousand year old 'road map' graffiti is still present in many lines.

History

The Transcontinental Subway was a massive infrastructure development taken on by the United States during the human era. The nation for decades had fallen behind in the maintaining and upgrading of its public transport system and related infrastructure, and plans had been drawn to completely renovate the way the nation moved between cities, by creating a subway system that ran across the entirety of the United States. Initially, the project began on the east coast as a means of connecting the cities of New York, Albany, Boston, Washington DC, and other smaller cities and towns together to better solve issues of traffic above ground and reduce emissions from cars and planes, starting its first construction in 2025.
High speed rail technology was later added to the project, replacing the subways already present in those cities, and more tunnels were built to connect each state's capital city to the system, when the project truly became the Transcontinental Subway in 2042 after some lines connected with those in southern Canada but its primary goal of connecting every state into one massive, fast, and efficient transport system remained. Attacks from dragons slowed the project's construction but also fueled efforts to hasten it, as dragons were often too large to fit themselves into the tunnels and were wary about attacking segments that were exposed above ground due to the trains' speed. Many different lines were never completed and found new purpose in being used as underground shelters from dragon attack, and refugees would often walk along the half finished tunnels to seek refuge and safety.
The project was never completed, construction efforts having been abandoned some time in the 2300s, but still saw use for at least another hundred years before it was fully considered a ruin and relic of the past. Most tunnels on the eastern seaboard have been flooded for hundreds of years due to the shifting of the coast line, with all of the New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, and Georgia lines being completely submerged and inaccessible. Other states further east than New York still have some lines that are not completely flooded, however the dry sections of these lines can be as few as a couple hundred yards. Due to having been abandoned mid construction, the subway lines are a treasure trove of human era relics and technologies, many having been preserved due to cave ins of certain lines. Some areas are considered world heritage sites due to that their relics, many thousands of years old, are too fragile to move and can only be photographed for preservation. Construction equipment from the human era still litters many of the tunnels, with digs finding new lines previously unknown every few decades.

RUINED STRUCTURE
2428

Founding Date

2042

Alternative Names

Underground Subway, TS Subway, The Tunnels

Type

Transportation station

Parent Location

North America

Owning Organization

The Underground