The New York Rapid-transit Subway

Proceedings.] DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY, 115 15 per cent. In London the tramways were greatly neglected. In Mr. Davison. New York there was 1 mile of tramway to 5,800 inhabitants; in London in 1904 there was 1 mile to 33,000 inhabitants, but since then the ratio had advanced to 1 mile to 20,000. Ile hoped that the County Council would carry out the policy suggested by the Advisory Board and extend the tramways, as he believed the habit of.travel would grow. A very gloomy view had been taken of tube railways, but it should be remembered that upwards of 24 miles of new line had been opened within a short time, and also that at the hours of greatest pressure the Central London railway carried about its maximum. The traffic totals for London railways as a whole were constantly increasing, and he ventured to think that it would not be long before the tube railways were working to their full capacity. The London traffic-problem was not yet solved. Sir John Wölfe BARRY, K.C.B., Past-President, remarked Sir John that there were two matters to which, in speaking on the Wolfe Barry, spur of the moment at the commencement of the discussion, he had not alluded. One was the subject of accommodating the traffic while surface subways were being made. What had been done lately in London was very different from the course adopted in New York, and also very different from what was done when the first Metropolitan railway was made under Euston Road, when the road was cut up from end to end, and the inhabitants •suffered the greatest inconvenience, being almost as badly treated as they had been in New York. Since the date of the first Metro- politan railway, about 1863, the method of constructing subways had altered; and in the construction of the City lines and the Whitechapel extension the traffic in the streets was not only not blocked for a single hour during the daytime, but the whole street was left open for roadway and footpath, the only part occupied by the works being certain specified places in the road railed off to accommodate the width of one cart and tlie length of two carts, together with a crane—a space not larger than was frequently used for constructing a sewer. There had been absolutely no obstruction of traffic along the crowded thoroughfares of Cannon Street, Tower Street, Eastcheap, and the Minories, under which the railway was made, and the only exception was what Mr. Davison had alluded to in regard to the tramways in the Whitechapel Road. In that statement he included underpinning of houses and the diversion of all the pipes and sewers. With regard to the cost of these precautions the first contract had in it the following clause:— . ‘ In constructing the works, the contractor’s attention is drawn to the circumstance that the roadway and footpath traffic is not to be interrupted, 12