The New York Rapid-transit Subway

88 DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. [Minutes of Mr. Macassey, in elongated cities, although one would be inclined to think that as distances were less people would travel less, it was entirely the other way : as the density of the population increased the number of times the people travelled increased also. There were illustrative figures, for which he was partly responsible, in the Report of the Royal Com- mission on London Traffic, where a good many instances were given showing the tendency on the part of a population whose density was high to travel more than the same population would travel if spread over a larger area. In Manhattan there was an extraordinarily dense population, and there was a greater tendency on the part of the New York population to travel. There were other traffic-conditions which differentiated New York from London. Even the multi-millionaire seemed to have no objection to travelling in the street-car witli his less wealthy brethren, and there was generally among all classes a con- stitutional tendency to make much greater use of the local means of transport than was found in London. Therefore, when figures were put forward to show that because with population of a given amount in New York a certain number of journeys were made annually per head, those figures were absolutely no criterion at all as to what similar populations would do in other cities. There were, moreover, certain natural and legislative conditions in New York making for cheap construction. Perhaps the strongest tendency of modern reform in municipal matters was to secure as far as possible co-ordination of travelling facilities, and to restrain wasteful expenditure on them. In a city of the type of New York, Nature herself did that. On some of the main routes of Manhattan there were street-cars on the surface, “ elevated ” cars overhead, and the new subway immediately underneath; and each of those means of transit was performing an entirely different function. A number of tests had been made for the Royal Commission and published in their Report. There were three or four things that influenced people in choosing their means of transport—the time of the journey, the cost of the journey, and the “ convenience,” meaning the proximity of the means of loco- motion, the frequency of the service, and so forth. Because there was a frequent service of street-cars and the means of transport was in immediate proximity to the side of the curb, people in Manhattan used the street-cars up to about 2 miles in preference to the overhead railway or the subway. For longer journeys they travelled by the elevated railway; they did not mind the inconvenience of walking to the station and climbing up the stairs for the purpose of getting a faster journey. For still longer journeys they did not mind walking to the corner of a block, perhaps 100 yards or 150 yards, to a subway-station, for the purpose of getting the express service