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July 23, tgux
RECORD AND GUIDE
CiAliMD FtoiEsTrit.BraLDij/G Afi&KrrEeTURp.KflUsafoiDDEGCBitTOt.
" BirSDfeSSAltoTHEMESOFGEriER^llimiRESl.^
PRICE PER YE-AR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS
Communications should be eddresaed te
C. W. SWEET
VubUshed Every Saturdag
By THE RECORD AND GUIDE CO.
President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer. F. W. DODGE
Vice-Pres. & Genl. Mgr., H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER
Noa. 11 to 15 East a4tl» Street, New York City
(Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to 4433.)
"Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y.. as scconil-elass matter."^
\y, if Manhattan is to hold its own, and if its water-front
is hereafter to be used for the shipment of any large part
-of the freight which reaches the port, some plan such as
that suggested by Commissioner Tomkins must be carried
out, and both the merchants' and the taxpayers' associations
of Manhattan should get together for the purpose of urging
the improvement and of discussing the ways and meana of
carrying it through. It so happens that between 14th and
59th streets west of 7th avenue there remains a large area
of comparatively cheap real estate which could be used for
the terminals aud warehouses required by Mr. Tomkins'
plan; and so much of this real estate as was necessary could
be acquired in the near future much more cheaply than it
could ten or fifteen years from now. Prom the point of
view of Manhattan real estate owners, an enormous deal
depends upon the ability of. Mr. Tomkins and others to dem¬
onstrate the practicability of his well considered project.
copyrighted. 1910, hy The Record & Guide Co.
Vol. LXXXVL
July 2S, 1910.
No- 2210
THE practicability of the plan prepared by Commissioner
Tomkins of the Dock Department for an elevated
freight road along the exterior street so obviously depends
upon two conditions that it can scarcely be discussed until
it is shown that these conditions can he satisfied. H de¬
pends, in the flrst place, upon the ability of the city to
raise something like $100,000,000 for the cost of the road
and the tertuinals; and how that is to be done has not even
heen suggested- To be sure, in case the road and the ware¬
houses were self-supporting, the city stock issued for the
purpose would not have to be reckoned as part of the net
debt of the city, but the plan cannot be proved to be self-
supporting until after it is in operation, and where in the
meantime is the money to come from? Tbe city has only
$60,000,000 applicable to Subway construction and needs
two or three times as much. Where can it obtain the
authority to issue another $100,000,000 of securities, no mat¬
ter what the assurance that they will not become ^ drain
on the taxpayers? The second condition which will have
to be satisfied is some proof of the ability of the city offi¬
cials to reach au agreement with the transportation com¬
panies. The success of the plan depends absolutely upon
their co-operation, and in the past it has been notoriously
difficult to bring such co-operation about upon mutually ac¬
ceptable terms. These conditions will be so difficult to satis¬
fy that the plan of Commissioner Tomkins will, we fear,
be soon relegated to the graveyard of ambitious projects
which require for their accomplishment larger resources and
more power than the city possesses. Only about a year ago
the idea was broached of a freight subway. It was ap¬
proved by the Public Service Commission and some sort of
a company was organized to exploit it; but since then, noth¬
ing has heen heard of it. Presumably the company could not
arouse any interest in the plan among the railroad corpora¬
tions, whose participation was necessary.
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THE serious obstacles which any scheme of this kind
must surmount are the more to he regretted, because
of the increasing necessity of some more economical and
efficient method of shipping and distributing freight in Man¬
hattan, The machinery for handling freight in the central
borough is one of the most wasteful in the world. Part
of this waste is due to the fact that no sufficiently drastic
measures have ever been taken by the local authorities to
overcome the disadvantages of Manhattan's insular situation;
and in part it is due to the absurd system of docks, sep¬
arated from warehouses by a broad exterior street, which
involves an enormous expenditure of money in trucking and
in loading and unloading exclusively by hand. The Record
and Guide over twenty years ago published a series of
articles, exposing clearly aud fully the extravagance of these
methods; but it was unable to arouse any interest in the
matter. Of late years, however, the success that has attend¬
ed the operations of the Bush Terminal Company in South
Brooklyn has opened the eyes of both the city officials and
the merchants of Manhattan. The plan of the Bush Company
includes hitherto unexcelled opportunities for manufactur¬
ing, warehousing and shipping goods both by rail and water;
and the city itself has been obliged to copy these ideas in
the development cf its own water-front in South Brooklyn.
Moreover, similar means will be taken to economize the
handling of freight iu all future water-frout development
plans—such, for instance, as that of Jamaica Bay. Obvious-
THE concessions made by Mr. Shonts in his last letter to
Mayor Gaynor places the receait Subway proposals of
the luterborough Company in an entirely new light. He
offers on behalf of the company to withdraw the demand that
the city guarantee the company against loss from operation,
and he intimates that the company would if necessary accept
Madison insteatl of Lexington avenue as the line of its upper
East Side extension. In the opinion of the Record and Guide
this offer clears up the situation enormously and offers to
the elected city officials an obvious and probably beneficial
course of procedure. Inasmuch as the plans for the Broad¬
way-Lexington route are about to be advertised, there is
nothing to he done pending the completion of this process.
It would be a great gain to the city in case this wasteful
competitive route had never been legally laid out; but it
has been, and so much work has been done upon it that
it must be allowed to run its course. But surely in view
of the offer of the Interborougb Co., the Board of Esti¬
mate should agree to consider no bids which force the city
to use up over $100,000,000 of its own credit in the con¬
struction of this Subway. If a bidder can be obtained who
will build the Broadway-Lexington avenue line with his own
funds and upon otherwise acceptable terms, he should, of
course, be allowed to do so. On the other hand, if the
bidder calls upon the city to devote all the credit, and more,
that it can afford for Subway construction, to the Tri-
Borough route; or, if in any other respect the bid is un¬
satisfactory, negotiations should he begun immediately with
the Interborougb Company, and an arrangement should be
reached on the basis of President Shonts' recent letter. The
arrangement should include the third-tracking of the ele¬
vated roads as well as the Subway extensions. By these
means New York would obtain a maximum increased ser¬
vice for a minimum expense, and a passenger could ride ali
over this Subway or elevated system for the expenditure
of one nickel. The advantages of such a plan are so great
that the insistence of the Public Service Commission on its
competitive independent route seems to be singularly ob¬
stinate and stupid. Whether it will be possible to hold the
Interborough Company to the terms proposed in case the
Broadway-Lexington avenue route should be built by private
capital remains to be seen. In that case the city might have
to make certain concessions, because it would have paral¬
leled the whole East Side line of the company. But in any
case it looks as if the obstacles to some satisfactory arrange¬
ment were gradually being removed.
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APPARENTLY, the. Mayor understands much more clear¬
ly than Mr. Willcox does the advantages which will
accrue to the city through reaching some agreement with
the Interborougb Company and through the operation of the
whole Subway system by a single corporation; and it is for
this reason that the recent proposals of the President of that
company have been addressed to him instead of to the Pub¬
lic Service Commission. But he is not willing to make a
decisive stand in favor of some arrangement with the In-
torborough Company. In an interview last week, he stated
clearly ttiat the fundamental question to be decided was
whether the city government should favor an independent
competitive Subway system or a comprehensive system op¬
erated by a single company; and he submitted the question
to the enlightened public opinion of the city. But in a mat¬
ter of this kind public opinion is not enlightened. It needs
to be directed towards reaching a proper decision. The
Mayor can obtain support for his policy, if he has one, not
by appealing to public opinion for help, but by giving public