44 DOCK FACILITIES IN NEW YORK CITY. 
morning alongside the piers, and the freight in the cars is unloaded onto the 
piers, on many piers so closely as to make it difficult for the truckmen and 
delivery companies of the various consignees to reach their particular ship- 
ments. Inthe afternoon these car floats are pushed to the bulkhead proper, 
where they receive the outgoing freight delivered during the day at the 
various bulkhead sheds along the river. ‘The loaded cars are then towed 
back to Jersey and made up into the “Westbound”’ freight trains. 
This method of handling the “Railroad to the City” freight results in 
a floating freight yard from the Battery north to 23d Street. As a conse- 
quence of the immediate importance of the food supplies, manufactured 
products and other freight handled by the railroads in this manner, there 
has been a gradual crowding out of the steamship lines, both Trans-Atlantic 
and coastwise, until now of all of the piers for maritime commerce between 
the Battery and 23d Street, 40 per cent. are to-day used for the floating 
freight yards of the railroads. 
This water front is imperatively required by the growing maritime 
interests in the port. On file with the Dock Department are many applica- 
tions from steamship lines which request piers only in this section of the 
water front, owing to the requirements of their business. Further, this 
railroad occupation of the water front by floating freight yards is the great 
barrier, if continued, to the early construction of piers for vessels of the 
Titanic and Olympic class and other still larger ships. Such piers, unless 
a radical upsetting of the passenger and packet service is attempted, must 
be located on the North River in Manhattan. Piers, especially for these 
larger ships, should not be located any farther up the Hudson River fairway 
than absolutely necessary. ‘The farther these large ships have to proceed 
up the river the more difficult becomes navigation owing to the increased 
number of river craft, especially from the ferry service concentrated at 
23d Street, and the farther removed are their piers from the wholesale 
houses, warehouses and factories in lower Manhattan—the destination of 
the larger part of their packet freight. Therefore any extension of the 
Chelsea Trans-Atlantic terminal should be to the southward. A further 
reason for this is that to the southward natural conditions lend themselves to 
longer piers. The bulkhead line south from the Chelsea section to the 
Battery makes an inward curve or bow. ‘The pierhead line now closely 
follows this curve. While the War Department has refused a permanent 
extension of the pierhead line in the Chelsea section, it may be fairly 
assumed that no objection would be advanced to making the pierhead line 
from the southerly pier in the Chelsea section to Pier “A”’ at the Battery a 
straight line, since the fairway of the lower Hudson rapidly widens. Then in 
