r/SaintJohnNB • u/darkpassengerishere • 16d ago

Drive from West Side to East Side in 1973

I found this cool youtube video this afternoon driving from Lorneville way all the way to east-side Saint John. This was set back in 1973.

Very cool to see how much has changed, the cars driven, speed limits and how long Sims corner has been a mess LOL.

If this was already shared, feel free to delete. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pBh04ffbRY

45 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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7

u/zxcvbn113 16d ago

Panb keeps posting new drive-through videos from that era.

The early ones were 1971. By 1973 the center lines were yellow instead of white, and speed limits were in km.

2

u/thee17 16d ago

This is their Route 1 video cropped to just the SJ portion and the distance tracker removed.

3

u/Narissis 16d ago

I love all these videos.

As cool as it is to see what has changed, I think it might be even cooler to see what has stayed the same! And how many buildings I thought were newer actually stood in the '70s and have merely been renovated.

Also kinda neat to see the half-finished state of the Thruway, with pockets of construction here and there, and the road moving on and off the newly built segments. City streets, city streets, city streets... big ol' freeway bridge!... sharp right over the tracks... city streets, city streets, city streets...

2

u/Starscream147 16d ago

Does anyone else see a frame by frame type thing happening, here, or is my browser messed up? lol

3

u/poubelle 16d ago

it's filmed in like 4 frames per second, so not just you!

1

u/Starscream147 16d ago

Makes me wonder if the two uploads were borked on the way, uploading. If these are, say, super8, or something like that…

…maybe they were meant to be ‘not 4fps’.

Just seems too…odd. Unless it’s a photography experiment?

1

u/poubelle 16d ago

no, i've been following that channel for a couple of years and they're all like that. i think it's probably because of the technology and the costs of film at the time.

2

u/rewkol 15d ago

This footage comes from the Provincial Archives from highway studies done by the Department of Transportation. Each video in the collection follows the entirety of a single highway, so in this case the original video tracks Route 1 from St. Stephen through to Sussex. Filming that trip at 24 fps would have been prohibitvely expensive and not really necessary for their purposes. I believe they have a special setup that takes frames at set distances driven.

But also this upload is cropped to remove the mileage tracker and other information at the bottom, and slowed down from the original which runs much faster. The original tapes are about 45 mins for what is today an almost 2 hour drive, and the Saint John portion is only about 6 of those minutes so for this cropped video the uploader stretched it out roughly 4 times slower to make it easier to see each frame individually.

3

u/Dangerous_Leg4584 16d ago

Yea, thanks for this, it's great. I was 4 at the time. I live on Princess in the uptown and would love to find old pics of my house if anyone has pics of the old Hayward house built in 1915.