The New York Rapid-transit Subway

108 DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. [Minutes of Mr. Haigh, have been the cost of a tube system, he had put together a synthetical Table to make up the 10% millions sterling given as the total cost of the construction of the Subway. The rates he had put were, of course, quite imaginary, but, being proportionate, they might serve the purpose of comparison. He had first put down the Table given on p. 12, which showed 27’4 miles of different classes of work, of which 13 miles was in flat cover and 1-2 mile in arch; then he had put down the amount of single-track and double- track line from p. 8, which gave 25’7 miles of railway. He had separated those into a few items according to the differences of construction, and had obtained the following particulars . 0 1 mile of single-track route at £250,000 per mile, £25,000; 3’9 miles of two-track at £450,000 per mile, £1,755,000; 1'3 mile of two-track at £600,000, £780,000; 5 miles of two-track at £315,000, £1,575,000 ; 7-6 miles of three-track at £160,000, amounting to £1,216,000; 6-4 miles of four-track at £630,000, £4,032,000; 1*4 mile of five-track at £720,000, £1,008,000 ; the whole amounting to £10,391,000. That was slightly in excess of the 50 million dollars stated on p. 46, but for apportioned figures, it was fairly near as a matter of comparison; whereas, the £200,000 given as the cost per single-line mile of the flat-covered subway portion, which could not be reconciled with the total quoted, was half as much again as the average cost of the whole route. As a matter of fact, the cheaper construction only extended to one- fourth of the route, and there was much more expensive work in the tunnels. From these figures, and considering that for shallow subways the minimum cost given was £410,000 per double mile, he obtained the following comparison: 38 miles of double line would equal 76 miles of line made on the New York Subway, and at £300,000 per mile the cost worked out at £11,400,000. But in order to make a fair comparison it was necessary to take, not 12-foot tubes but 16-foot tubes, and for that extra diameter had to be added £5,700,000, the total thus coming out at £17,100,000. The Paper gave the total cost of construction at 101 millions, but adopting the rate of £410,000 per mile, the cost worked out at £13,000,000, so that on that basis the deep tube would have cost 4 millions more than the subway on the whole cost of the work. There were many other points wliich he would not occupy time by referring to. For instance, there was the addition to the cost of con- struction owing to the expense of working lifts. He did not quite agree with capitalizing that. He thought it should be considered simply as an increase of working-expenses. He did not see how it could be fairly put to capital in any way, because no capital was expended,