910 Transactions of tbs American Instituts. 



lection of all fares wili be performed at the entrance of stations. As 

 no person can, therefore, ride without prepayment, so facilities are 

 also given for excluding all drunken or lewd fellows and preventing the 

 introduction of objectionable baskets and baggage. Car thieves and 

 pickpockets will rarely operate here, but. through the stations, and 

 under the surveillance of a station keeper or a policeman. These 

 stairways will always be within a building, not exposed to rain or 

 enow, direct from the sidewalk, and easy of access to all. Ladies, 

 children, and aged people will have equal facilities for getting into 

 cars, as there can be no jumping on or off from the street, or while in 

 motion. 



7. A great desideratum for city passenger travel is uniform as well 

 as higher rate of speed. On the elevated railway, by reason of regular 

 stoppages at stations and the impossibility of collisions, cars may be 

 run at a much higher average and more uniform rate than upon any 

 surface road. Up town and down town cars being on independent 

 tracks, at opposite sides of the same or in different streets, no 

 delay on one can arise from temporary stoppage on the other. Nei- 

 ther public processions nor military parades, blockaded streets nor 

 steam iire engines, will hinder a free transit for one moment. A fall 

 of three feet of snow in a single night, or an accumulation of mud a 

 foot deep, wnll make no interruption to the frequency or regularity of 

 ^ the cars. 



It is not so much my purpose to investigate the details of this plan 

 as to direct public attention to it as one of the proposed systems for 

 city travel and parcel dispatch wdiicli is feasible and practicable, 

 requiring a minimum amount of outlay, and entailing little pre- 

 liminary expense in encroaching on private property or interfering 

 with vested rights. The heavy expenses attending acquirement of 

 property and rights of way in the underground plans are here gre^itly 

 reduced, if not entirely avoided. The construction will not involve 

 the demolition of a single building, the blockade of a single street cross- 

 ing, nor an excavation larger than for the laying of a section of gas pipe. 

 It must be borne in mind that however bad and faulty a line of sur- 

 face railway might be an elevated v,*ay over the same route could be 

 made with the smoothest possible running surface, and with easier 

 gradients. Both the dangers and the delays attending the system of 

 surface roads are lessened in a large degree. The encumbrances of 

 mud or snow upon the track, the presence of a crowd of citizens or 

 swarm of children, long lines of civic or funeral processions, excava- 



