The New York Rapid-transit Subway

114 DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. [Minutes of Mr. Davison, in the middle of streets, and the passengers would have been taken down direct on to island platforms, instead of through long lengths of underground passage, which no doubt deterred people from travelling on the tubes for short distances. Another heavy tax upon railway-companies was the price of land. The promotion of a Bill raised the price of land at once, and the promoter was raising the price without any assistance on the landlord’s part. The principle of betterment should apply. Mr. Davison lived in hopes of seeing the price of land purchased under compulsory powers fixed at the rateable value plus 10 per cent. ; that would be good for the rates and just to the traction-companies. With regard to local authorities, it would never be known who was to blame, because in Greater London there were no less than 106 highway- authorities. He had been the resident engineer for the late Sir John Hawkshaw and Sir John Wolfe Barry on a portion of the City lines, and on those lines he did not think the traffic was obstructed for a single hour. A sufficient length of roadway was opened each night, and balks were put across the street, with longitudinal planks on top and then cross planking. This was finished during tlie night, and street-traffic was resumed next morning. The only difficulty occurred when tramways had to be carried. In reinstating the lines of tramway in the Whitechapel Road raised platforms had to be placed at the sides of the footpaths. These certainly were a great obstruction to traffic, and considerable hardship was suffered by frontagers during the reconstruction of the road-surface. The ideal underground railway was mentioned in the Report of the Advisory Board to the Royal Commission on London Traffic, where it was suggested that the station should be as near the surface as possible and should be connected by tubes—giving a kind of switchback section. With regard to costs, the only comparable costs that could be taken were those given as paid to sub-contractors. It had to be remembered that the New York tenders were bids not for construction alone, but for working for so many years, and a low tender was worth risking, as the money would be returned on the working. Mr. Macassey had given some interesting facts about the shape of cities and the number of journeys per capita. There was no doubt that the habit of travel increased witli the facilities for travel. The shape certainly had something to do with it, but the per capita journeys of London, which had not changed its shape, had increased enormously, even since the sitting of the Royal Commission on Traffic. In that Report it was shown that the urban railways carried 70 per cent, of the passengers the omnibuses 15 per cent., and the tramways