Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

The Record and guide: v. 36, no. 913: September 12, 1885

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992 The Record and Guide. September 13, 1885 given in explanation: for there is but one enterprise now being prosecuted which is sufficiently comprehensive in its effect to pro¬ voke hostilities. This enterprise is found in the extension of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to New York, an undertaking which, as it is well known, has already cost the outlay of many millions of capital, and must call for the investment of many additional mil¬ lions before it can be completed. Nothing could be more repre¬ hensible and exhibit greater fatuity on the part of the railway nianagers than a continuation of the rate war for the purpose of crippling the Baltimore & Ohio roa I. This road has always been a disturber in railway finance simply because it had no outlet to New York, and was forced to cut rates for the purpose of securing traffic. How silly, then, would be resistance to an attempt at placing the road upon an equal footing with the other trunk line roads. A Baltimore & Ohio terminus on the harbor of New York would be the needed pledge for its future good conduct. It is not the division of through traffic that the railways have to fear. There is traffic enough for all if their managers will but have the good judgment to hold rates sufficiently above the cost of service to make their operations profitable, and the country will be the g«niner by the increase. Yet it looks now as if there is not wisdom ecough in railway management to discern this simple truth, the process of committing suicide for the injury of rival roads still being continued. All this talk of railway rivalries in the West is but throwing dust in the eyes of the public. The Western roads are feeders, but comparatively local roads in their interests; and if the rate war is to be continued it is a trunk line war, with its cause for hostilities here in the East. The Fiflh Avenue Railroad. The daily papers have shown more or less temper in discussing the project for a horse railroad in Fifth avenue. Some of them go so far as to call it "impudent" and "rascally." This state of mind may be natural, but it should not be encouraged. If there were au}^ money to be made by running horse-cars through the Mall in Central Park or down the middle aisle of Trinity Church, aud it looked as if the scheme were practicable, there would be people enough to snatch at the chance of getting a charter for that purpose. It is of no use to blame them. If these particular corporators had not taken the charter, somebody else would have been found to do so. If it be true that none of the corpora¬ tors lives in the avenue, or has] any property interests in it, it is nothing to the purpose. What one of the corporators called the ** sentimental objection" to the use of Fifth avenue for car tracks, meaning the objection of people who lived there to having what they regard as a nuisance in front of their houses, has evidently had no effect upon the other corj^orators. For them the first question is whether the road would pay, and the second is whether they will be permitted to build it. It is possible, of course, that they do not mean to build it at all, but only to get hold of a charter that has a negotiable value to other caijitalists. This does not concern the public aspects of the matter, or the answer to the questions just put. As to the first, we should imagine there cannot be much doubt upon that point. The road would pay, and pay very handsomely. The movement of traffic in New York is all up and down, very little of it across. Thanks to the stupidity of the authors of the street system of 1807, there are provided for all this movement up and down the island only eleven or twelve streets, while for the less important movement across town there are provided between the Battery and Harlem Bridge very nearly two hundred streets. If the blocks had been turned the other way, when the city was laid out, and after the first blunder of laying it out in rectangular blocks had been committed, the management of traffic would have been much easier. That is to say, if the short block fronts had teen at the north and south ends of the blocks and the block fronts at the east and west, the short front remaining at 200 feet and the longer at 600, there would have been forty or fifty avenues, and sixty or seventy cross streets. The business [of the city could then have been done very conveniently. There would have been avenues enough to have admitted of eight or ten being reserved for heavy trucking and eight or ten more for riding and driving in light vehicles, while there would still have remained more than twice as many conduits as the existing system supplies for the daUy move¬ ment up and down. As things are now, every one of the avenues could be used as such a conduit without being superfluous. Fifth avenue is in fact the only avenue which has not already been brought into requisition. It cannot be doubted that there would be enough custom for a railroad in Fifth avenue to make it pay. The other question, whether or not the railroad will be permitted to be built ia not so clear. It ought not to be permitted, of course. Tne fact just mentioned that it is now the only avenue unencum¬ bered by car tracks, and consequently the only drive in the city, is conclusive as regards the public interest. As the principal avenue to Central Park it should be kept clear, not only of horse cars, but pf heav^ traffic, and reserve^ for light equipages, Tbere is no dis¬ pute that more than nine-tenths of the property holders in the avenue would and do oppose the project. Everybody who expects to continu