328 



Popidar Science Monthly 



An enginfcfcrmg andci takuif^ ui li cuiciiauus cliliiculty. This honeycomb of tunnels at the 

 Grand Central Station, at Forty-second Street and Park Avenue, New York, is being dug 



eight hundred milHon people? That is 

 the number of passengers the present 

 system of rapid transit in New York 

 (elevated lines and subways combined) 

 can transport in a year. This carrying 

 capacity is being increased to three bil- 

 lion ! \\'hen the new system is com- 

 pleted it would stretch, in single track, 

 from New York's city hall into the bor- 

 ders of Eastern Tennessee, some six 

 hundred and twenty-one miles. The cost 

 of the new lines and extensions amounts 



to three hundred and thirty million dol- 

 lars, which is to say, as much as the gov- 

 ernment has thus far expended at Pan- 

 ama. No other urban rapid transit 

 system in the Avorld will compare with 

 New York's in magnitude. 



The new subways — in single track, the 

 total amounts to more than one hundred 

 and fifty miles of tube and trench — are 

 the most interesting side of the construc- 

 tion now in progress ; for this work is 

 at once the most difficult and the most 



