ON THE CARS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144146, 16 July 1913, Page 6

ON THE CARS.

“When, figuratively speaking, the whistle blows at five o’clock in the afternoon, a million persons (hall the Imputation of Vienna) drop jxsn or tool in tho small area of Now York, extending from Union Square to tho Battery, and start for home. &<>' no burrow into the uuder-river tubes; others cling, score-deep, to surlaco cars; still more are engulfed in tho subway or scale the rusty heights of the elevated.” This tremendous traffic problem before New York occupies an important space in the last Muu>s. The cry for rapid transp ut ; b,t began in the ambling horse-car .;..rh of the ’seventies, has only been partially stilled by the advances mtu.a through steam elevated lines, elect- 10 surface lines, and finally by subway method, which at last almost convinced New York that the millennium of travel comfort had arrived, and all tramc problems were solved forever. But to-day, with the original capacity of tiio subway doubled, with every possible square inch of car space racing at top speed along tracks almost red-hot with incessant wheel friction, conoitions are worse than ever. W' K> u it was built, tho promoters behoved that a maximum capacity or -jtx»,uyo passengers a day would meet any luUiio requirements. Yet, scarcely ten years after, tho subway had to servo an average of 830,000 a day, and on great occasions it has hauled more than a million; while two and a-half 1111!liotis use surface ears every day. Tho watchword of tho whole street traffic system now is speed. “’Stop a surlaco car five minutes, and almost before you realise, it there is a lino of .stalled ears a quarter of a mile long. The loss of a minute by a train will pile up in an inextricable mass thousands of impatient people at a dozen stations.” The swiit succession must be maintained at any cost save life, and every possible device ol human or mechanical energy- is employed to hoop the wheels going that carry this tangled troubled mass of millions to work and homo. In New York everybody rides in cars, everybody seems hurry-mad, and everybody apparently wants to reach, or nearly reach, the same place at the same time. Then Now York is alwavs increasing. When tho Hudson Terminal Building was opened, it brought five thousand inhabitants to a region already dense with skyscrapers. The Woohyorth building houses ten thousand—in itself quite a thriving little town. And every tour minutes a new New Yorker is born to ride in cars, making five hundred additional residents n\day. There is, however, an immense transit system in view to bo completed by 19X7. It will cost as much as the Panama Canal, and will present far more abstruse engineering difficulties. But it arranges for tho estimated growth of Now York up to ,1930, with an anticipated population of nine millions taking their tram rides. By that time, if congestion has grown too great again, perhaps tho industrial life will bo regulated. Workers will bo arranged in shifts, coming and going at different times —or some other civic precaution must be taken to avoid a vastly exaggerated edition of what is now the almost intolerable “rush” hour.