The New York Rapid-transit Subway

Proceedings.] DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. 81 taking up a long, narrow street in London a considerable number Mr. Fitz- of pipes would be found, and if any width of the street was maurice. occupied with new works it was difficult, without widening the street at great expense, to replace them—an operation upon which the water-companies and gas-companies naturally insisted. Tn wide streets there was of course less interference with the traffic, and the people who lived in the houses fronting the street had a better chance during construction of being comfortable, in fact of living at all. The next point had reference to the traffic in New York and in London. The traffic in New York was quite different from that of London, the greater part of it being tramway-cars. In some of the Reports that had been issued there were particulars of the maximum traffic in certain streets. Probably Broadway carried the maximum traffic, and at certain hours of the day there were about 600 vehicles, including cars, per hour. In places like Piccadilly, Fleet Street, and the Strand, the traffic was very nearly double that amount, and was continuous throughout the day. Looking at the statistics put before the Royal Commission on London Traffic it was seen that the number of vehicles using Piccadilly from 10 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m. exceeded 1,000 per hour. Again, New York had another great advantage over London in that there was always a parallel street within a short distance of the street in which construction was going on, thus enabling traffic to be diverted into that parallel street. That advantage was seldom found in London. If the whole of Regent Street were taken up, it would be found difficult to divert the traffic into any other route. The parallel streets also rendered it easier to deal with pipes, because where there were two large, wide streets running parallel, the pipes could very well be divided among them and they were not crowded into one line of traffic as in London. Then the ordinary sub-surface structures, according to his observations, were considerably fewer and less difficult to deal with in New York than in London, and that also was due to the parallel streets, and to the fact that the sewers had not been con- structed under the same difficulties. In London all sewers had very flat gradients, while in New York the sewers discharged directly into either the East River or the Hudson River, and the gradients were not so flat as in London. It was an easy matter to deal with a sewer wliich liad a steep gradient, whereas it was very difficult to deal with a sewer with a flat gradient: in the one case the gradient could be flattened, but in the other it could not. Probably one of the principal considerations that liad determined the Author to build a shallow subway was the material through which the sub- way was made. Practically the whole of New York, from the [the INST. C.E. VOL. CLXXIII.] G