THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



39 



noon, and you are easily convinced that 

 beyond the Bronx live a million people 

 whose bread-winners work below Har- 

 lem River. Go to the Pennsylvania Sta- 

 tion at the same time, and you see the 

 wage-earners of tens of thousands of 

 Long Island and Jersey homes coming or 

 going. And at the Hudson Terminal one 

 is ready to conclude that half of Jersey's 

 homes have wage-earners and salaried 

 folk who work in Manhattan and live in 

 Rahway, Orange, Montclair, or some- 

 where down Jersey way. 



A new skyscraper lifts its head toward 

 the blue and straightway 15,000 people 

 find working quarters. Let us load these 

 workers on subway trains and see what 

 it means. A ten-car subway train can 

 carry a thousand people to or from work. 

 It takes fifteen such trains to handle the 

 new skyscraper's tenants. And it takes 

 twenty-six minutes to put fifteen such 

 trains through the necks of the traffic 

 bottle — as at 426. street. 



In no other city in the world do as 

 many people live out of walking distance 

 to their work as in New York. Manhat- 

 tan Island is 13 miles long and only a 

 mile or so wide, and downtown Manhat- 

 tan is the habitat of the skyscraper and 

 not of the home, except on the East Side. 

 The result is an unbelievable amount of 

 travel. Subway, elevated, and surface 

 cars carry two billion people a year. 

 Every day 30 tons of nickels flow into 

 the coffers of the rapid transit and sur- 

 face lines. Every year 200 car loads of 

 "jitneys" are harvested from the ride- 

 buying public. 



THE NEW YORKER A GREAT RIDER 



If New York had only to meet its an- 

 nual increase in population, that in itself 

 would be a sizable task; for taking care 

 every year of the comings and goings of 

 a new population equal to that of Wyo- 

 ming were no mean undertaking. But 

 that is only the beginning of the big city's 

 transportation troubles. The people ride 

 more frequently with every extension of 

 facilities. 



When New York had only its surface 

 lines to depend on, Mr. Average New 

 Yorker took 147 rides a year. Then 

 -came the elevated and he began taking 

 215 rides a year. When the first subway 



went into commission, he jumped the an- 

 nual number of his rides to 298. Now 

 he is using the cars more than ever — is 

 this Mr. Average New Yorker — with 

 some 348 rides a year to his credit. How 

 many rides he will take when all the new 

 subways and elevated lines are completed 

 can only be surmised, but the extensions 

 under way will enable the overhead and 

 underground systems to handle three 

 billion passengers annually without aid 

 from the surface lines. 



Crowding her debt limit to the utmost 

 to meet other conditions imposed by her 

 extraordinary growth, New York was 

 financially "up against it" when traffic 

 demands called loudly for new facilities. 

 She was not willing to have new subways 

 built and owned by private enterprise to 

 compete with those already in operation 

 and owned by her, though leased to an 

 operating company ; and yet she was not 

 able to finance the extensions without 

 outside help. Meantime, subways that 

 were built to handle 400,000 people a day 

 were approaching the time when they 

 would be called upon to move 1,200,000 

 every twenty- four hours. 



FURTHER EXTENSION OE SUBWAY AND 

 EEEVATED EINES 



So the city made a deal with the two 

 rapid-transit companies to "go fifty-fifty" 

 with them in building all subway exten- 

 sions and to allow the companies to ex- 

 tend the elevated lines. 



The result is that instead of one line 

 up Manhattan, on the East Side to 42d 

 street and on the West Side above that 

 street, there will be, when the present 

 project is completed, a line all the wav up 

 the East Side and another up the West 

 Side, with branches into the boroughs of 

 Queens, Bronx, and Brooklyn. 



And yet, with all the effort that has 

 been made to anticipate the city's traffic 

 needs, every New Yorker feels that there 

 are other needs ahead. Already there is 

 agitation for a through line from down- 

 town to uptown that will make even 

 "rapid transit" a slow phrase. It is be- 

 lieved that the time is not more than a 

 decade distant when it will be imperative 

 to establish an entirely new sort of serv- 

 ice — a "high-speed service." This may 

 be given by a line built under one of the 



