New York-based artist Jake Berman wants cities to start examining ways to bring their public transit systems into the future—by looking at the past.

And for Philly, that means an oft-forgotten 100-year-old subway plan.

Berman, an urbanist who has drawn various maps on the “lost subway and trolley systems” of other major U.S. cities, turned his attention recently to Philly’s forgotten lines, specifically a 1913 plan prepared by then-Transportation Commissioner A. Merritt Taylor. The New York-based transit enthusiast and artist relied on the Philadelphia Free Library as well as other city records to draw up an outline of that subway system, in an effort to show what public transit in Philly may have looked like, had the plan gone through.

The MFL was underway when Taylor created this map, which includes several branches of major lines that never came to be, like the divide on the north end of the Broad Street Line, which would have split into two lines—one to Olney and the other to Rising Sun. Another line that was never created in that plan was the Darby elevated subway line, which would have stretched from Darby, through Center City, and eventually on to Camden.

“(They could build) subways to take people to places that could use Philly’s excess population,” Berman said of his research on the motivation behind the 1913 system. He explained that, at the time, there was a booming population in center city. Officials aimed to move that population outward, giving people a chance to live in the south west and northern parts of Philly while still having adequate access to the middle of the city, thus cutting down on congestion caused by the trolley system at the time.

Some aspects of the 100-year-old plan, naturally, are outdated, like the Broad Street Line loop that Taylor hoped to run around City Hall. Berman explained that was a result of the trains at the time, which couldn’t reverse at the end of a line like they can now. A loop would have given the Broad Street train the ability to turn around in the middle of the city.

So what happened to the original subway proposal?

Berman cites a number of factors, including politics that pushed Taylor out of his role as transportation commissioner. A more pressing issue was World War I, which caused construction costs to go through the roof, Berman explained.

“I want to encourage people to think about what might be through the lens of the past,” Berman said, adding that many people are too quick to dismiss potential changes to a city’s subway system. “100 years ago they had a very concrete plan with budgets and stations and design...if this was possible 100 years ago, think about the reasons why it’s allegedly not possible now.”