OVERCROWDED LONDON.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3340, 15 December 1883, Page 3

OVERCROWDED LONDON.

Something, insists a London paper, will have to be done to lighten the traffic of that huge city and to make * room for passengers, so that people may get out of each other’s way, Under; neath the ground they must go in a few years hence, or else aloft. Which is it to be? The Americans find elevated railways answer. The elevated railways of New York constitute one of the most (striking features of that remarkable city. Metal pillars, erected at the edge of the pavement or in the centre of broad avenues, and standing some 20ft high, support the lines, along which passenger trains are driven at intervals of five or six minutes. The long,straight streets of the city are, of course, peculiarly suited for this strange mode of locomotion. Passengers who use it can look down on to the heads of the pedestrians below, or into the sitting zooms and bedrooms of the houses they are passing; but so we can on many railways. Access to the numerous stations is obtained by flights of iron steps at the corners of the streets. Would this do for London ? Perhaps, for the people have been of late years most accommodating to new ideas, cosmopolitan in their notions. Something must be done, that is clear, to relieve the traffic in the streets. The memory of last season in Piccadilly is alarming to recall, nay, from Piccadilly to the Bunk it was almost as bad all the way. Someone suggests more refuges, and the points of the compass to be marked on them.