http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhatCouldHaveBeen

This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.



And then he died. This was going to be his final concert tour.



The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'" — John Greenleaf Whittier "For of all sad words of tongue or pen,The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"

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This is when directors or writers release details about plots, characters, backstories, or other elements they thought about adding to the story at one point but ultimately never did. Unlike All There in the Manual, however, this new information is not released as Word of God with the intention of being added to the Canon. These elements are only What Could Have Been but never were and never will be part of the story proper.

Some may quickly find a home in Fan Work. Many fans love hearing the possible paths their favorite story could have taken... even while breathing a sigh of relief (or feeling disappointed) that they ultimately didn't come to be.

This can also refer to a Sequel Hook that never got a payoff, alternate casts or directors, or even tantalizing news that the entire story was completely different from the one we all know, when it was first conceived.

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Just a few typical reasons for why stories get altered along the way:

A good place to find What Could Have Been is in DVD Commentary and out-of-continuity pilots used to pitch a show.

Keep in mind that Tropes Are Tools and that the ideas and concepts implemented into the final product are sometimes better than What Could Have Been.

See also The Other Marty, Vaporware, Development Hell, Dummied Out, Mid-Development Genre Shift, and Uplifted Side Story. Contrast with Offscreen Moment of Awesome where a particularly grand moment is seemingly perfectly set up to happen but then isn't seen, and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot for when they used an awesome idea in a less than ideal way. Occasionally something that was removed survives in another part of the series, then it is Refitted for Sequel.

Have in mind that, although the name may suggest otherwise, this trope is for divergent aspects of the work which were actually considered by the creators in the real world. A story (usually not canon) that takes the plot of an older story, alters a detail and shows how such change would have made things play out differently is a What If?. If you want to discuss how the work could have been better if some detail was different (with that detail being just your own idea), start a Wild Mass Guessing.

For further reading, see the TV Moments That Never Happened thread at Television Without Pity, the Original Vid Junkie's "Never Got Made" files, and the "Movies that Never Were" series at CHUD.com, the links for all of which are included in this lost movies entry. This subject has also been covered by The Onion A.V. Club here , here and here.

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Other Examples

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Asian Animation

Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: There's speculation that there was going to be an I Love Wolffy 3, but it was cancelled due to the first two doing poorly at the box office. In 2017, they registered a trademark in the United States that would've allowed them to release lots of merchandise, but they never used the trademark and they let it expire.



Automobiles

The 2000s Mini reboot was originally meant to be a kei car-style microvan, before turning into a premium hatchback.

In the 60s and 70s, British Leyland worked on a hatchback that would replace the original Mini. However, such a design had never reached production. Instead, a bigger hatchback was designed and released in 1980 as the Austin/MG Metro.

Maybach cars were originally meant to have a biturbo V24 engine, displacing 15 litres and making about 1000 HP. Due to packaging issues and problems with deigning a durable enough gearbox, the biturbo V12 from the Mercedes S600 and CL 600 was used instead.

First design sketches for the 1993-2000 Mercedes C-Class depicted a car with a more rounded appearance.

The Mercedes CLS could have never seen production, if not for an executive seeing an employee-made drawing of "a Jaguar built by Mercedes" and deciding to put it into production.

1962 Dodge midsizers were originally meant to be fullsize cars, but instead got downsized to compete with new GM A-body vehicles.

Cadillac originally planned their 1967 models to have an OHC V12 engine.

The 1980-2003 Fiat Panda was originally meant to be built on a streched platform of the 126. Its name was originally planned to be "Rustica", but someone pointed out that given Fiat's reputation for corrosion, a name containing the word "rust" shouldn't really be considered for any of the brand's products.

The 2003-2012 Fiat Panda was planned to be an experimental lightweight low fuel consumption 5-seat small car, but ended up as a more traditional city car. Also, the vehicle's name was originally meant to be "Gingo", but the protests of Renault, makers of the Twingo, blocked the change.

The 2007 Fiat 500's original designs depicted a 5-door car with styling similar to the VW New Beetle, but with a more toy-like appearance.

Volkswagen could have not existed at all, if not for the British major Ivan Hirst reopening the KDF-Wagen factory after World War II and renaming the product to "Volkswagen Type 1", colloquially known as the Beetle.

The VW Beetle's original replacement was a project codenamed "EA 271", a mid-engined hatchback with the motor below the front seats, However, technical difficulties and the high projected cost of producing such a vehicle made the EA 271 not enter production. Instead, the VW Golf/Rabbit debuted in 1975 as a Beetle replacement.

Between 2010 and 2014 Porsche worked on a roadster slotting below the Boxster, but the idea ended up getting abandoned.

The Porsche 928 was planned as a 911 replacement, but ended up being a more luxurious alternative to it.

In the late 1980s, BMW was working on the idea of a V16-powered car. There even were a few prototypes of a 6.6 V16 7-Series built, based on the 750i and nicknamed "766i" or "Goldfish", but such an engine ended up being too complicated for a production car.

The BMW 8-Series had a 550 HP version called "M8" considered, so that BMW would have a rival for the Ferrari 456GT. However, the car never ended up hitting production.

In the mid-2000s BMW wanted to release a range of 3 crossovers being the middle ground between their wagons and the X SUVs. These vehicles were meant to be based on the 3-Series, 5-Series and 7-Series, respectively named V3, V5 and V7. The 7-Series-based vehicle never saw production, whiule the 3-series and 5-series-based ones morphed into the GT versions of these cars.

Caterham tried to release a car based on the 2017 Renault Alpine, being in an alliance with the latter. Unfortunately, the British company did not have the money it took to design the new model and the car ended up existing only in the digital form and as clay models. The alliance also wanted to make a Caterham-branded subcompact and small crossover in order to get more appeal in the Asian markets. These vehicles never went further than the general idea.

The Lamborghini LM 001 was a civilian adaptation of the Cheetah, a military prototype that had too high fuel consumption to be accepted, and might had not existed if the Cheetah got greenlit for army service.

Lamborghini wanted to release a mid-engined 4-seater coupe called "Espada" in 2008. The car was planned to be built using a stretched Gallardo spaceframe and mechanics, but never saw a release. Later, the company was tooling with the idea of building a front-engined 4-door sedan, like the prototypical Estoque, but instead settled on developing an SUV, the Urus.

DeLorean Motor Company wanted to release a 4-door counterpart of the DMC-12, but the vehicle never made it into production, due to a lack of funds for engineering it.

The Land Rover Series I's prototypes had a single seat and the steering wheel in the middle, due to the buyer demographics being perceived as having familarity with that layout, driving tractors as part of their work. The final production version ended up being equipped with 3 front seats and a normal left- or right-mounted steering wheel.

The 1964 Ford Mustang was originally meant to be a 2-seat roadster with a rear-mounted V4 engine.

In the 80s, Ford decided that the 4th generation Mustang would be a Mazda 626-based FWD coupe. Instead, due to public outcry, the 4th generation Mustang was an RWD car, and the FWD coupe was released as the Ford Probe, slotting below the Mustang.

Early prototypes of the Ford Pinto envisioned it as a highly safe car. However, the production version had many of the safety features removed.

The Mercury Comet was designed as an addition to the Edsel lineup, but the cancellation of the latter brand got it put in the Mercury lineup in the last second.

The 3rd generation Ford Focus had a Mercury counterpart, called "Tracer", originally being develeloped alongside, but the 2010 discontinuation of the Mercury brand led to the cancellation of the Tracer.

Rover originally planned to introduce a model called "55" in 2003. The car would have been an RWD compact/midsize sedan, competing against the BMW 3-Series. However, it had to be shelved, due to financial problems.

In the mid-80s, MG Rover worked on an aluminium-bodied 3-cylinder small car that would replace the Metro, but it was deemed too ambitious, and the more conventional Metro stayed on sale.

The 2nd generation Rover 400 was being designed as an all-new car. Instead, financial troubles led to the final version being just a Honda Concerto with different badging.

During the pre-order stage,the Jaguar XJ 220 was advertised as having a naturally aspirated 542 HP V12 engine, based on the one used in the XJS and XJ 12. However, due to yet unknown reasons, the final version delivered to customers ended up getting a 510 HP version of the 3.5 twin turbo V6 from the MG Metro 6R4 rally car.

In 2010, Jaguar showed the C-X75 concept, a turbine-engined hypercar. A year later, the turbine engine concept was shelved, due to too high CO2 emissions, and replaced with a hybrid 1.6 powertrain, making 888 HP. Unfortunately, that was also cancelled, because of a lack of a big inough target market.

The Jaguar XJS was originally meant to be mid-engined. A styling cue left over from the original design is the C-pillar shape, made to accomodate vents for an engine behind the seats. The same car also had a Daimler version considered in the 1980s, colloquially called the Daimler-S and having normal-styled C-pillars, but it did not reach production.

Rover was thinking of introducing a mid-engined sports car with their V8 for 1973. Unfortunately, that idea was cancelled to avoid competition with Jaguar, which was planning to make the XJS such a car, as described above.

Triumph planned to introduce a redesign of the TR 7 in 1983. However, British Leyland decided to discontinue the Triumph brand altogether in 1983.

An alternative design for the Austin Allegro was a large redesign of its predecessor, the 1100/1300. However, such a design never got into a production.

For some time, Peugeot was thinking about building a replacement of the 607, the 608. At some point, the car was even meant to share many mechanical components with the Ford RWD cars (e.g. Lincoln LS) - and the Ford 5.0 V8 would be the top of the line engine! However, in the late 2000s, Peugeot decided to cancel the idea of a 607 replacement.

The Peugeot 309 was originally going to be sold as the Talbot Arizona, but the cancellation of the Talbot brand led to the change.

The Chevrolet Vega, notorious for its shoddy materials, was originally envisioned as being built out of higher-quality stuff.

In 2010, Lotus released 5 sports car concepts, intending to put them into production. Unfortunately, financial troubles made only one of the cars, the Elan, have any chance of getting a release, and this is because it would be a replacement to an existing model.

In 2015, Volvo showed a shooting brake concept, intending to put a similar design into production if the public reception is good enough. However, the estimated demand ended up being too low to justify production, and the design isn't going to be mass-produced.

Packard's 1957 line was originally planned to have its own styling, but ended up being rebadged Studebakers, due to budget constraints.

The McLaren-Mercedes partnership had 3 cars planned after the SLR: a mid-engined supercar, codenamed "P8", competing with the Ferrari F430 or Lamborghini Gallardo, a more powerful version of the P8, codenamed "P9" competing with the Ferrari 599 or Lamborghini Murcielago, and a completely different car, codenamed "P10" and replacing the SLR. However, the partnership ended up splitting, due to different visions on it, and only the P8 ended up hitting the market as the McLaren MP 4-12C, and with McLaren's own 3.8 twin-turbo engine, not the AMG 6.3, as originally planned.

The Honda Fit/Jazz's name was meant to be "Fitta". There even were commercials and press photos showing the car with such badging, but the mockery by Scandinavian press (as "fitta" sounds similar to a few Scandinavian vulgar terms for female genitals) led to a name change.

The Daewoo Matiz's design was drawn for the Fiat Seicento. However, Fiat turned the offer back, and instead, the design was bought by Daewoo, with a pair of rear doors added.

The Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow's original nameplate was "Silver Mist". Fortunately, someone noticed that "mist" means "manure" in German, and the car was quickly renamed, with new badges fitted just before the debut.

In order to turn the Rolls-Royce Phantom into "the ultimate luxury car", BMW was considering fitting it with a 9.0 V16 engine. However, such a car would be too expensive and complicated for production. The only prototypes known to the public were the ones starring in Johnny English Reborn.

In 2008, a start-up called Carbon Motors showed the E7, a prototypical purpose-built police car, powered by a more durable BMW straight-6 diesel and with special safety capabilities. The original production date target was 2012, but the car was first delayed, and then the company went bankrupt in 2013.

In 1949, 6 working prototypes of the Taylor Aerocar, a flying car, were built. However, due to financial problems and a lack of a big enough target market, the car wasn't ultimately produced.

The General Motors EV1 could've given General Motors an environmental edge. Its dismantlement crippled the company's image, and allowed Toyota to get ahead of it.

And these examples are only the tip of the iceberg, as a typical car has about 10 different designs considered before the production car one gets chosen, and most of the aborted ones never see daylight.

Motorcycles

Contrary to the public's perception as a conservative company who keeps on pumping out Retraux bikes with antiquated engines, in the 1970s Harley-Davidson partnered with Porsche for "Project Nova", which was going to be a clean-slate, state-of-the-art design and a stark departure from the 1930s to 1950s-derived motorcycles the company is very well known for to this day. The Nova was going to have a liquid-cooled, overhead cam V4 engine, something that was uncharted territory for Harley back in the day. The MoCo reportedly spent between $10 and $15 million for the project, and as such a lot of work was done—tooling, prototypes and whatnot—with several pre-production examples made to be released in the 1980s. However, budgetary concerns and management changes following the buy-back led by Vaughn Beals and Willie G. Davidson from AMF forced Harley to just play it safe and concentrate on the more traditional Evolution engine, which like its predecessors was derived from the 1936 EL "Knucklehead" powerplant penned by co-founder William S. Harley. Harley's collaboration with Porsche wasn't all in vain though, as traces of the partnership could be found in the company's current models, such as the VRSC V-Rod which was jointly developed with Porsche and the use of engine counter-balancers amongst other things.

Card Games

A bit more subtle than the other examples on this page. Originally, each new expansion of Magic: The Gathering was going to have a new color scheme on the card backs instead of the usual brown and tan — for instance, Arabian Nights would have been orange and magenta, Ice Age would have been two shades of blue. This was nixed when the designers realized this would make it too easy for your opponents to identify the cards you have in your hand by their backs, giving them an unfair advantage, so the card backs have remained unchanged since day one. (Nowadays of course, most people have card sleeves...) Expansion sets were planned to be temporary installments played along with the main set, then forgotten as newer sets replaced them. The "Standard" format preserves this idea. The set "Planar Chaos" focused on the theme of alternate realities. One of the original ideas to express the concept was to present the set as coming from an alternate timeline where Magic has six colors instead of five. The sixth color (purple, by the way) made it quite far in the development process (at least, by the standards of rejected ideas) but was ultimately scrapped. The set was going to feature packaging showcasing an alternate logo style and other changes, though the cardback would have stayed the same. Wizards of the Coast kept the final set of the Scars of Mirrodin block a mystery for a time, saying it would be either New Phyrexia or Mirrodin Pure, depending on which side won the war. Eventually it was revealed to be New Phyrexia. This surprised precisely no one, but for the portion of the player base who liked Mirrodin and disliked Phyrexia, we can only wonder what the set could have been like. Unfortunately for them, recent articles about the development process reveal that the last set never could have been Mirrodin Pure to begin with—the block was originally going to start with New Phyrexia and go from there! That only changed when they decided it would be more interesting to show the process of Mirrodin gradually being corrupted into New Phyrexia. During the development of the Shards of Alara block (and several times before) there were an idea to introduce a 6th basic land: the Cave . It was nicknamed "Barry's Land" and would be strictly worse than any other basic land, as it only tapped for colorless mana. Sounds pretty harmless right? The idea was that it would increase the number of basic land types to 6, giving abilities such as "Domain" a bigger boost. However, this came with a slew of other problems. Due to the wording on older cards, this rendered a lot of older cards much harder to use (as they say "control all basic lands" rather than "control 5") as well as broke other cards, which mentions the other 5 basic lands by name (because they search for those lands) but not Cave. Eventally a true 6th colorless Basic Land came to be in Oath of the Gatewatch in the form of Wastes. It also solved the problem with Domain by not including a sub-type. WotC hyped up the "mystery" of the Shadows over Innistrad set, teasing us as who could be behind the strange events going on. Turns out it was the Eldrazi. This would have been an incredible surprise... if the last block hadn't been all about fighting the Eldrazi. There had originally been intended to be some time between Battle for Zendikar and SoI, but things were re-ordered behind the scenes. As it was, it was so obvious that it was the Eldrazi that some were actually surprised that it wasn't a trick. War of the Spark was the culmination of centuries of Bolas' scheming and about 6 years of ongoing story. In order to hype up the set, WotC hired writers to write 3 stories, a prologue novella, a novel of the events of the set and an epilogue. Unfortunately, the prologue got delayed until well after the set was released, so a lot of stuff happened without proper set up. Niv-Mizzet was killed during the prologue, so him coming Back from the Dead note This new incarnation, Niv-Mizzet, Reborn, now marks the fourth time he's gotten his own card, a record for a non-planeswalker.

Did you know that there was an attempt to make Yu-Gi-Oh! into a card game, before the popular CCG we know and love today? Bandai's version of Duel Monsters was simplistic, if crammed with rather bizarre rules and effects, and was much farther detached from the card game we saw in the anime and manga than Konami's version was. However, it was reportedly rather popular, so imagine if this was the version of the game we got, instead of Konami's version...

In poker, when a hand is won before all the cards are dealt, the act of revealing the cards that would have been dealt later had the hand continued is called a rabbit hunt. Rabbit hunting usually isn't allowed in casinos, as it slows down the game.

Comic Strips

Calvin and Hobbes came about when Bill Watterson tried to submit a comic called The Doghouse to United Feature Syndicate. The strip's teenage protagonist had a younger brother who carried around a stuffed tiger. Watterson was told that these two were the strongest characters, so he reworked the concept, got rejected by UFS and took it to Universal Press Syndicate instead.

Music Videos

Miserable: Lit originally wanted the video to be them performing the song in an arena in a manner similar to concert footage (they wanted something "sexy" and "huge"). But then they received the treatment for the video, which had them perfoming the song on a giant woman in a bikini. At first the band thought it sounded kind of cheesy but they agreed to do it if they got Pamela Anderson to play the giantess. At the time they were shooting the episode of her show VIP where they were guest stars and had enjoyed working with her. Pamela Anderson was also a major sex symbol at the time, so they figured having her star as the giant woman would give the video more clout and make it come off as less cheesy. The next time they saw Pam the first thing she said was "Hey boys, I'm gonna be in your video" and the rest was history. Considering how well received the video was, it's safe to say that not going the concert footage route was the right choice.

Pavement's "Painted Soldiers" video has a storyline where the members are fired one by one - the punchline is that member Scott Kannberg has promoted himself to manager, fired the rest of the band and replaced them with Veruca Salt, who mime the end of the song. The original pitch had them replaced with Weezer - this would have had different subtext, as at the time some considered Weezer a more radio friendly Pavement copycat band.

Puppet Shows

Roleplay

There are several ideas in the discussion thread of We Are Our Avatars, some of them did eventually come to fruition, others didn't, at some point, it was decided Andros and Enker would be in the Revenge of the Spark arc, ultimately, they didn't end up becoming part of Lucrezia's army. Silver was planned to appear during the Incarnates Arc as a personification of Lust, possibly going to levels of Complete Monster that would almost rival Apos. Daionus decided he did not want to play as that sort of character, and declined. Also, in the same arc, Catherine was planned to appear as a personification of Gluttony, and the present Catherine had to be killed in order to defeat her. It didn't happen, but it ultimately proved to be an example of Tropes Are Not Bad. Etheru states that he planned on Joey and Catherine acting as foils for one another, but arcadiarika's decision to refuse developing the character any longer shoots this possibility down. At one point, in revulsion of the fact that nothing was happening, Lemurian at one point thought up the "Ghost Town arc", where the characters would be dropped in a desolate town without food, water, or their powers for a week, the arc was discarded when a player pointed out that the arc wasn't proving anything, because it was pointed out to be almost exactly like the complaint: Nothing happens.

Magic Academy Leonard, who is basically The Hero by now, had initially been planned as an Expy of Lezard Valeth. The only vestige of this still remaining is his Dark Magic type and last name, Valenth. It was initially planned to have Khaos and Vicelogia as the main villains. Then Khaos was retooled into a more benevolent being, and Vicelogia was written out entirely. There had been a plan to have Reitt turn evil and become an expy of the Obsidian Lord. Riorde Blenforte was initially to be the Evil Genius in Qord's group. Matthew Streika was initially intended to be a student. He became a well known hero instead, given the time frame the RP was set in. And who knows how the story would've gone had the GM not changed...



Tabletop Games

Transportation Infrastructure

The New York Subway has seen a fair share of proposed lines or extensions of existing lines that never came to fruition.

that never came to fruition. Highway revolts have happened several times in the United States as the first freeways were built. New York City will forever be known as the home of Robert Moses, one of the most polarizing figures in the history of urban development in the United States. He had several proposed highways across Manhattan that would've displaced lots of residents if they were built. Atlanta, Georgia saw the freeway revolts in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Had it not been for the revolts of several city neighborhoods that would have been at risk of getting razed, the freeways could've been a lot different. Namely, instead of terminating in Buckhead, the Georgia 400 would have continued south through East Atlanta, approximately 2-3 miles east of the Downtown Connector (which carries I-75 and I-85), and connected with I-675 at the south end of the Perimeter (I-285). There was a planned beltway around the Denver, Colorado metropolitan area, which was to be signed as Interstate 470. It would have been the third auxiliary Interstate in Colorado, after I-225 note a twelve mile highway from the Tech Center to I-70 and I-270 note a connection in the northeast between I-25, I-76 and I-70 . Eventually, a compromise was reached, and three-quarters of the beltway was built, using three different designations: Colorado State Highway 470 (from I-70 in Golden to I-25 in Lone Tree), E-470 (from I-25 in Lone Tree, past I-70 northeast of Buckley Air Force Base, and Denver International Airport, to I-25 in Eastlake to the north of Denver), and the Northwest Parkway (from I-25 in Eastlake to Broomfield). Currently, a gap remains in the northwest part of the beltway, as it stops short of reaching the Denver suburbs of Broomfield and Golden, where fierce opposition to the road continues. Golden is opposed to completion of the beltway; Broomfield supports it, and has been exploring alternate routes.

In the 1980s, the Southern Pacific Railroad was contemplating merging with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. The holding companies merged, and were so confident enough that the ICC would approve it, that they began repainting locomotives into a new unified "Southern Pacific Santa Fe" paint scheme, including the letters SP or SF and an adjacent empty space for the other two (as SPSF, the reverse order of the holding company). Most nicknamed this the "Kodachrome" paint scheme since it resembled a box of Kodak camera film. The merger was opposed by the Justice Department in 1985 and denied in a 41 vote by the Interstate Commerce Commission on July 24, 1986, who ruled that such a merger included too many duplicate routes and was therefore monopolistic over west coast freight rail service. Unfortunately, many, many locomotives and cabooses had been repainted into Kodachrome by this time, and the initials SPSF were jokingly changed to "Shouldn't Paint So Fast" by railfans. These two railroads would end being merged in the mid-1990s with other railroads: Southern Pacific was bought out by the Union Pacific Railroad, while the Santa Fe was merged with Burlington Northern to create the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (more commonly known as simply the BNSF).

The Chicago L has a history as rich as the New York City Subway's. This includes many lines that were proposed but never built. The Orange Line was originally planned to run all the way to Ford City Mall, and rollsigns for the new 3200 series cars even had a Ford City destination sign incorporated into them. However, due to budget cuts, the line was only built to Midway Airport, two miles north of the Ford City Mall. The Blue Line has two: you'll notice at the west portal of the Milwaukee-Dearborn Subway near UIC-Halsted Street station empty tunnel portals to the outside of the ones used by the active tracks. These were once intended for a four track subway line; only two tracks were ever built, and the unused tunnels dead-end after a few yards. Also on the Blue Line, you'll notice looking out the front or rear windows that when the tracks curve from Lake Street to Milwaukee Avenue, the tunnel bores continue west, albeit with no track of any kind on them, which were intended for a future subway under Lake Street that never saw the light of day.

The Philadelphia Subways have seen their fair share of never-completed projects, particularly as relates to the Broad Street Line: The Roosevelt Boulevard Subway , a project for a subway and elevated line down Roosevelt Boulevard from its intersection with Broad Street to Northeast Philadelphia, was shovel-ready and had funding in the 1970s. It was shot down by community groups in the (largely middle-class and White) Northeast based on fears it would allow "undesirable elements" (read: poor Blacks) to enter their part of the city more easily. The funds were used instead for the Center City commuter rail tunnel that connects the previously separate Pennsylvania Railroad and Reading Railroad lines radiating from Philadelphia. 30-40 years later, the people of the Northeast have warmed up to the idea of the subway—but there's no funding left. There are plans to run improved bus service on the route, and maybe if that is successful a subway line will be reconsidered, but to this day it remains the unbuilt mass-transit project in the US with the highest potential ridership (after the Second Avenue Subway, which as you can see above is actually being built). The Roosevelt Boulevard Subway is just one of several forms of old plans to use the Broad Street Line as a backbone for a number of different branching lines that would connect at Olney Avenue, Erie Avenue, Tasker-Morris, and Snyder stations. These were never built, but the flying junctions to connect the unbuilt track to the Subway were.

The Berlin U And S Bahn has one of the longest and most complicated histories of unfulfilled plans of any city transport system, due to two world wars, the particularly nasty economic problems of the early 1920s and early 1930s, Nazism, partition, Communism, and the disappointing economic climate in the city after it became united Germany's capital. The one extension being constructed at the moment is a variation on schemes dating back to the 1930s at least.

The notorious M25 motorway surrounding London is the stitched-together remnants of a much more ambitious plan called "Ringways". This system was designed to solve the city's traffic problems, and consisted of 4 different motorways around London for different purposes: 1 for the middle of London, 2 for the suburbs, 3 for greater London, and 4 for avoiding London completely). They completed parts of Ringways 1, 3, and 4 before the whole project was canceled in 1973. This was for many reasons, including unpopularity from the public, concerns over noise and the city's landscape being ruined, its sheer cost, and the Labour party (its biggest critics) gaining power from the GLC elections. Starting in 1975, the completed parts were stuck together and opened as the M25 in 1986.

The London Underground: The Jubilee Line was originally going to be known as the Fleet Line until it was decided to give it its current name to denote Queen Elizabeth II's silver jubilee. As originally opened, the line ran from Stanmore to Green Park, then turned east to terminate at Charing Cross. Following the line's opening, there were multiple plans towards extending the line onwards from Charing Cross, none of which came to fruitition until 1999. In the first version of the Jubilee Line Extension plan, the line ran from Charing Cross via Aldwych and Ludgate Circus to Fenchurch Street station, then via tunnel under the River Thames to connect to the East London line north of Surrey Docks (now Surrey Quays) from where it would take over East London Line services to New Cross Gate and New Cross with tunnels continuing from the latter to Lewisham. In anticipation of this, the tunnels of the first phase of the line continued eastward from Charing Cross under Strand almost as far as Aldwych. Eventually, in the 1980s, the development of Canary Wharf as a financial center, led to new proposals being floated for extending the Jubilee Line, including what was ultimately built: redirect the line to go from Green Park to Westminster, then following the route of the Waterloo and Greenwich Railway, continuing to Stratford via Canning Town alongside the North London Line. Even so, the approved route underwent some changes. A station was originally planned at Blackwall, but this was replaced by diverting the line between Canary Wharf and Stratford underneath the Thames to serve the Greenwich peninsula at North Greenwich station. Plans for the Millennium Dome did not yet exist, and this diversion was made to provide for a planned housing development on the site of disused gasworks.

The Interstate Highway System has a few examples: The original number list for the Interstate Highway System back in the system's infancy in the late 1950s included an Interstate 67 that was meant to connect Elkhart, Indiana and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and later, Benton Harbor, Michigan to Grand Rapids. The former proposal was ultimately scrapped while the Benton Harbor to Grand Rapids route instead became an auxiliary highway of Interstate 96 numbered Interstate 196. To this day, the number 67 remains unused in the Interstate Highway System. The original plans also had an Interstate 92 running from Detroit, Michigan to Benton Harbor, Michigan while Interstate 94 cut a more northerly run across the state through Lansing and Grand Rapids before turning southward toward Benton Harbor (where it would meet its present routing). In the end, Interstate 92 instead became Interstate 94's final routing, and Interstate 94's original routing became Interstate 96 and the aforementioned Interstate 196. Like 67, 92 has currently gone unused in the Interstate Highway System since. Interstate 13 was a highway proposed in the early 1960s that would have connected Fayetteville, North Carolina to Norfolk, Virginia via US 13 and US 17. Despite local interest, highway officials were far less interested in building said interstate, meaning that the proposal did not get very far before being scrapped. It wouldn't be until five decades later that an interstate proposal connecting Norfolk to a major North Carolina city (Raleigh instead of Fayetteville in this case) would get past the cutting room floor, in the form of Interstate 87 (no relation to the existing I-87 in New York).



Webcomics

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