The New York Rapid-transit Subway

Proceedings.] DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. 77 professional advancement of some of the junior members of the Sir G. Gibb, profession! Of course, now the question had only a past interest. It was not likely that the arguments or the estimates would lead anybody to think of making a shallow subway. The one great argument against tubes was the necessity for using lifts. That, of course, was a great misfortune, and he thought every- body would agree that an underground railway should be made as near to the surface as possible. Whether it could be made close to the surface or must be made lower down was a practical question that had been decided for London, and, he thought, rightly decided. The lift question was serious, but the delay was not so great according to the clock as it was according to the temper. There was no doubt people were apt to exaggerate the time they waited for a lift; it was only a few seconds, but they always imagined, when they were standing there, tliat they were missing a train down below. With the very frequent service of trains, how- ever, there was really not much delay. With reference to what Mr. Galbraith had said as to the effect of the differential-ticket system as compared with the uniform fare, it was not so great as people thought; in fact, he very much doubted whether there was any practical difference at all. A number of records had been taken of the bookings at a uniform fare on the Central London railway, and similar records with differential fares, and there was no difference in time worth speaking of between the two systems. But the lifts cost money; the lifts in the three more recent tubes had cost in the last half-year about €35,000 per annum. That, capitalized at 25 years’ purchase, added to tlie cost of 22 miles of tube an item of €40,000 per mile. That was just the capital burden which was added by the operation and maintenance of the lifts, and it was for engineers to say whether the burden of making the railway close to the surface would be greater. Sir George C. T. Bartley, K.C.B., remarked that he had been a Sir G. Bartley, member of the Traffic Commission with his friend Sir George Gibb, but unfortunately he was not, like Sir George, a practical railway man, nor was he an engineer, and therefore he knew little about the technical points of the great subject under discussion. He represented the man in the street, interested in the facilities for travelling about London. Sir George Gibb had given the real difference between London and New York when he mentioned the shape of the district. When in New York, it seemed to him that the long narrow parallelogram was a very much easier thing to manage than the large round centre of London. He did not agree with Sir George that the passengers were not in London; he believed there was an immense quantity of