I9I0.] DAVIES— TUNNEL CONSTRUCTION. 165 



States has increased over nineteen times, while that of the area now 

 comprising New York City has increased seventy times. 



NcAv York is the heart and center of the second largest aggre- 

 gation of people in the world, and differing from London, which 

 ranks first, has reached its present position during a comparatively 

 short life. New York was not laid out as a complete city, but has 

 developed by the fusion of scores of villages. Manhattan Island, 

 when it became populated north of Greenwich village, and was 

 mapped on the present plan, was so laid out because at that time 

 it was contemplated that the North and East Rivers, being the main 

 arteries of traffic, needed the greatest number of thoroughfares with 

 the closest intervals, to connect the water fronts. Consequently, 

 the cross-town streets are spaced close together (about 260 foot 

 centers) while the north and south avenues are widely separated. 

 The growth of New York far to the North and East, beyond the 

 East River, has entirely altered the traffic conditions and has pro- 

 duced one of the most difficult conditions in the solution of the pres- 

 ent problem. The municipal limits of the Greater City of New 

 York includes, by no means, all of the metropolitan district, which 

 comprises all the suburbs tributary to New York as a place of busi- 

 ness, all of which is essentially part of the aggregation of population 

 to be dealt with in the traffic problem. The estimated population 

 of New York City on December 31, 1909, was 4,516,000. The 

 suburbs on Long Island and Westchester County represent 325,000, 

 while the suburban district in New Jersey represents 1,691,000, 

 making a total of 6,527,000 persons. 



The last report of the Public Service Commission returns the 

 total passenger transportation in Greater New York in 1908. on the 

 various subway, elevated and surface lines, omitting transfers, 

 as 1,358,000,000 rides. The service in the New Jersey district was 

 284,000,000 rides. In that year the steam railroads hauled within 

 the same district over 100,000,000 persons, so that the total 

 passenger rides per annum in the city and vicinity of New York 

 amounts to the fabulous total of 1,742,000,000, an amount equal to 

 one ride per annum for each person in the world. 



In the Borough of Manhattan this traffic represents over 400 

 rides per head of population per annum, while in the entire city 



