42 DOCK FACILITIES IN NEW YORK CITY. 
necessity be required. There are many engineers who advise the adoption 
of the telpherage system or a series of overhead traveling conveyors in the 
pier sheds themselves for the handling of even miscellaneous freight and 
mixed cargoes. While the few telpherage experiments so far tried in this 
country leave as a debatable question the final superiority of these mechanical 
methods of handling cargoes over the present hand labor with trucks and in- 
dividual wagons, still the Department is carefully considering plans for a 
pier shed fully equipped with mechanical and automatic freight handling 
appliances. 
The Department has not been unmindful of the need for small local 
improvements where large terminals are not required or not possible from 
natural limitations. It is proposed in many sections of the harbor to replace 
individual piers by small terminal units. Such a terminal will call for 
one or two car float transfer bridges; and on the upland, short sidings 
and convenient freight houses. Between the different tracks will be drive- 
ways accessible so that trucks may load and unload directly alongside freight 
cars. This same water front would ordinarily accommodate only 1 or 2 
piers. At these piers only 2 or 4 car floats could be moored. Consequently 
only 24 or 48 cars a day could be handled. But under this terminal arrange- 
ment, this same length of water front will permit the loading and unloading 
of 125 freight cars per day. ‘The improvement here shown is intended at 
Nott Avenue, Borough of Queens. It is proposed that the city shall build 
this installation. Then, under the recent Terminal Act, a company is to 
take it over for operation upon a sufficient rental to pay for the interest on 
the investment and amortize the bonds. 
‘The large “’Trans-shipment”’ terminals do not attract the passenger lines 
or packet steamers because such terminals require large tracts of upland 
and therefore must be located in sections of the harbor remote from the 
central congested districtof Manhattan. On the other hand, the “Passenger” 
service and a large part of the “City-Imports”’ have centered on the Man- 
hattan Island water front. On this water front, the Kast River and the 
Harlem River have been practically relegated by natural causes, swift tides 
and narrowness of the fairway, to coast lines, railroad floats, canal barges, 
and other small craft. . 
On the North River, the upper sections of Manhattan, where developed 
and not occupied by parkways, are at present largely occupied by river lines, 
small craft and barges handling building materials and coarse freight. The 
lower Manhattan water front on the North River is a natural location for 
the large passenger and packet express steamers, since their passengers and 
cargoes are destined particularly for Manhattan; the former to its hotels, 
