The New York Rapid-transit Subway

94 DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. [Minutes of Mr. Hudleston. same thing would obtain with either kind of construction. In the case which he knew best, the Central London (Tube) Railway, nothing could have been saved in the cost of land had that been made a subway. There were one or two places on the south side of the river where land might have been obtained fairly cheaply from the Government if they had been charitably inclined ; but in busy places, to put a station, however small, partly on each side of a street, necessitated booking-halls and entrances, and would take quite as much land as a tube station. Again, the whole of the equipment was practically the same, whether the line was a tube or a subway. If all those things were added together and deducted from the actual cost, some rather extraordinary results were obtained. A subway in London, even if everything were in its favour and if there were no particular trouble with sewers and pipes, would be no cheaper than a tube railway, even taking the entire capitalized value of the lifts, which of course ought to be done. Taking out the whole expenditure on the Central London Railway, for land, equipment, rolling stock, permanent way, and signals, all of which was common to each class of construction, and the expenditure on the upper stations, which would cost quite as much, it was found that the cost of the carcass, so to speak, of the Central London Railway, that was, the station-tunnels, running-tunnels, sidings, platforms, and shafts, came out at only about £240,000 per mile of double track. To that had to be added the lifts, which averaged about €20,000 per mile. Therefore the whole cost of a tube railway laid under ordinary conditions in London, when nothing extra had to be paid for wayleave, was about a quarter of a million sterling per mile. With regard to a subway, turning to Fig. 4, Plate 5, which he thought had been in everybody’s mind for the last 10 years, since electrical working came in, the cost depended on size. Along Oxford Street it would not be easy to get any structure of the dimensions of Fig. 4 if a platform had to be made on each side. Some years ago he took out an estimate for a subway more or less of that type, 10 feet wide and 10 feet above the rails, to carry rolling stock of the same size as the Central London, as against the American stock, 12 feet 6 inches wide and 12 feet 6 inches above the rails. The cost, even allowing for a temporary road-surface, would not be so very heavy ; he made out that it would, with underground stations and passages, come to £200,000 per mile or a little more. Ilie cost of a structure of the dimensions sliown in Fig. 4, including the stations underground and the passages, would be about £260,000 or £275,000 a mile, but then came the question of the pipes and sewers. There were not many wide streets left in London