RECORD OF TESTIMONY AND STATEMENTS IN RELATION TO 125 



NECESSITY FOR DISTRICTING PLAN 



Regulation of traffic 



The regulation of traffic has come to be the most important exercise 

 of the police power. It is not primarily now-a-days for the prevention of 

 loss of life and prevention of accidents, but has to do with the expediting 

 of travel so as to save money to the public. It is not entirely the conser- 

 vation of life and limb. It is the conservation of property indirectly. When 

 the police power is accepted by the people to this extent, it seems to me that 

 it is logical that regulation of those things contributing to the congestion in 

 the streets and consequent loss of money to the people who use the streets, 

 should be considered a reasonable exercise of the police power. 



Sidewalk congestion 



Take the ordinary sidewalk, which in most of the streets downtown is 

 fifteen feet wide, and assume the normal rate of speed of pedestrians walk- 

 ing along the streets to be two miles an hour. I have made many observa- 

 tions, in Boston, Chicago, and elsewhere, but the ordinary congested con- 

 dition of the streets cause;; the average speed per person to be less than two 

 miles per hour and it runs down to one and a half miles an hour. Of 

 course, a person walking rapidly may do three miles an hour, but that does 

 not occur normally. A person on a street where such conditions exist 

 has only eleven square feet of space in the street assigned to his use. We 

 know that in buildings the limit is thirty-two square feet for most manu- 

 facturing uses. In other words, our streets are not as well off from a health 

 point of view as buildings are, under present conditions. 



The question as to what is a congested sidewalk is particularly inter- 

 esting, and the problem has been approached in this manner. A diagram 

 was prepared of conditions on Nassau street such as exist every day. 

 Pedestrians on one side of the street are shown in red, and on the other 

 side blue ; north and south bound differently indicated in each case. Those 

 who are pushed off into the roadway are shown in the center, north and 

 south bound separately. You will notice at a certain time of the day the 

 number of persons in the roadway suddenly jumps. At the same time those 

 on the sidewalks also jump in numbers. Conditions for some time pre- 

 vious to that particular time on both sides of the street show a less number 

 of people on the sidewalk. That is, during the previous fifteen minute 

 interval. Therefore it is natural to assume that when the conditions of 

 the sidewalk are as indicated by the diagram on the two sides just preceding 

 the period when they tumble off into the roadway, a condition of congestion 

 exists there. People seem naturally to avoid any further congestion on the 

 sidewalk. If we assume the condition indicated on the diagram as a con- 

 gested condition, we can work out statistics which will show that in case 

 of panic, conditions are almost impossible. This measure of congestion is 

 figured at four and a half to six persons per foot of width of sidewalk per 

 minute and all encroachment removal work comes down to that figure. We 

 don't remove encroachments unless the number of persons on the street 

 during the most congested fifteen minutes of the day exceeds six persons 

 per foot width per minute, and naturally they are then being pushed off the 

 sidewalk into the street. 



If we assume a fifteen foot sidewalk with a certain amount of lost room 

 because of encroachments against the buildings and hydrants against the 

 curb, only twelve feet of space usually remains and if we assume five per- 

 sons per foot wide per minute, that means sixty people per minute will pass 

 a given point. Some of the points on the diagram run as high as fifteen 



