THE UNDERGROUND INSTALLATION OF UTILITIES 385 



change your rights-of-way and leave shrubs, thus taking care of the 

 straight-line problems without increasing major maintenance 

 problems. 



CHARLES BRIDGES. I agree with the gentleman from Cleveland 

 when he urges us to give more consideration to undergrounding the 

 utilities in the older districts of town. 



For example, when the panel members say that 50 percent of "new 

 construction" has underground utilities, the figures sound very im- 

 pressive and we might easily assume that a creditable job is being 

 done. Remember, however, that in any one year less than 5 percent 

 of the total area of any town is what might be called "new construc- 

 tion". And if only half of that 5 percent is underground, it means 

 that only 2}/> percent of the total area of any town is going under- 

 ground in any one year! Let's also face up to the fact that if 50 

 percent of "new construction" is going underground, the other 50 

 percent is not going under which means that in fact we are not 

 winning the fight against the poles, and that we are instead losing 

 ground and adding every year to the jungle of wood and wire. 



The only solution is to start now to go underground in the older 

 districts. 



Consider also that any one pole in an area of "new construction" 

 may be seen by half a dozen people in any one day, whereas a pole 

 in an older area particularly downtown may be seen by thousands 

 of people daily. This means that the 5 percent which we started 

 out with, but which became 2 l /z percent upon examination, now has 

 been reduced to less than hundreths of a percent in terms of visual 

 impact and aggravation value. 



Let's not accept "new construction" figures which lull us into 

 complacency. Let's instead concentrate on going underground with 

 our utilities in those areas which count most downtown, and along 

 our highways. 



Mrs. VALLEY KNUDSEN. For the past few years we have been 

 making quite a study of the problem of putting utilities underground. 

 Very little has been said today about the danger of broken wires and 

 the creating of fires. These broken wires were caused by wind. We 

 went through the fire in Glendale caused by broken wires in three 

 different places. I wonder how serious you feel this is, having utili- 

 ties above ground in case of wind and fire. 



Mr. CISLER. It is a question we will consider in our deliberations. 



