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Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 86, no. 2210: July 23, 1910

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July 23, tgux RECORD AND GUIDE CiAliMD FtoiEsTrit.BraLDij/G Afi&KrrEeTURp.KflUsafoiDDEGCBitTOt. " BirSDfeSSAltoTHEMESOFGEriER^llimiRESl.^ PRICE PER YE-AR IN ADVANCE EIGHT DOLLARS Communications should be eddresaed te C. W. SWEET VubUshed Every Saturdag By THE RECORD AND GUIDE CO. President, CLINTON W. SWEET Treasurer. F. W. DODGE Vice-Pres. & Genl. Mgr., H. W. DESMOND Secretary, F. T. MILLER Noa. 11 to 15 East a4tl» Street, New York City (Telephone, Madison Square, 4430 to 4433.) "Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y.. as scconil-elass matter."^ \y, if Manhattan is to hold its own, and if its water-front is hereafter to be used for the shipment of any large part -of the freight which reaches the port, some plan such as that suggested by Commissioner Tomkins must be carried out, and both the merchants' and the taxpayers' associations of Manhattan should get together for the purpose of urging the improvement and of discussing the ways and meana of carrying it through. It so happens that between 14th and 59th streets west of 7th avenue there remains a large area of comparatively cheap real estate which could be used for the terminals aud warehouses required by Mr. Tomkins' plan; and so much of this real estate as was necessary could be acquired in the near future much more cheaply than it could ten or fifteen years from now. Prom the point of view of Manhattan real estate owners, an enormous deal depends upon the ability of. Mr. Tomkins and others to dem¬ onstrate the practicability of his well considered project. copyrighted. 1910, hy The Record & Guide Co. Vol. LXXXVL July 2S, 1910. No- 2210 THE practicability of the plan prepared by Commissioner Tomkins of the Dock Department for an elevated freight road along the exterior street so obviously depends upon two conditions that it can scarcely be discussed until it is shown that these conditions can he satisfied. H de¬ pends, in the flrst place, upon the ability of the city to raise something like $100,000,000 for the cost of the road and the tertuinals; and how that is to be done has not even heen suggested- To be sure, in case the road and the ware¬ houses were self-supporting, the city stock issued for the purpose would not have to be reckoned as part of the net debt of the city, but the plan cannot be proved to be self- supporting until after it is in operation, and where in the meantime is the money to come from? Tbe city has only $60,000,000 applicable to Subway construction and needs two or three times as much. Where can it obtain the authority to issue another $100,000,000 of securities, no mat¬ ter what the assurance that they will not become ^ drain on the taxpayers? The second condition which will have to be satisfied is some proof of the ability of the city offi¬ cials to reach au agreement with the transportation com¬ panies. The success of the plan depends absolutely upon their co-operation, and in the past it has been notoriously difficult to bring such co-operation about upon mutually ac¬ ceptable terms. These conditions will be so difficult to satis¬ fy that the plan of Commissioner Tomkins will, we fear, be soon relegated to the graveyard of ambitious projects which require for their accomplishment larger resources and more power than the city possesses. Only about a year ago the idea was broached of a freight subway. It was ap¬ proved by the Public Service Commission and some sort of a company was organized to exploit it; but since then, noth¬ ing has heen heard of it. Presumably the company could not arouse any interest in the plan among the railroad corpora¬ tions, whose participation was necessary. -------------*------------- THE serious obstacles which any scheme of this kind must surmount are the more to he regretted, because of the increasing necessity of some more economical and efficient method of shipping and distributing freight in Man¬ hattan, The machinery for handling freight in the central borough is one of the most wasteful in the world. Part of this waste is due to the fact that no sufficiently drastic measures have ever been taken by the local authorities to overcome the disadvantages of Manhattan's insular situation; and in part it is due to the absurd system of docks, sep¬ arated from warehouses by a broad exterior street, which involves an enormous expenditure of money in trucking and in loading and unloading exclusively by hand. The Record and Guide over twenty years ago published a series of articles, exposing clearly aud fully the extravagance of these methods; but it was unable to arouse any interest in the matter. Of late years, however, the success that has attend¬ ed the operations of the Bush Terminal Company in South Brooklyn has opened the eyes of both the city officials and the merchants of Manhattan. The plan of the Bush Company includes hitherto unexcelled opportunities for manufactur¬ ing, warehousing and shipping goods both by rail and water; and the city itself has been obliged to copy these ideas in the development cf its own water-front in South Brooklyn. Moreover, similar means will be taken to economize the handling of freight iu all future water-frout development plans—such, for instance, as that of Jamaica Bay. Obvious- THE concessions made by Mr. Shonts in his last letter to Mayor Gaynor places the receait Subway proposals of the luterborough Company in an entirely new light. He offers on behalf of the company to withdraw the demand that the city guarantee the company against loss from operation, and he intimates that the company would if necessary accept Madison insteatl of Lexington avenue as the line of its upper East Side extension. In the opinion of the Record and Guide this offer clears up the situation enormously and offers to the elected city officials an obvious and probably beneficial course of procedure. Inasmuch as the plans for the Broad¬ way-Lexington route are about to be advertised, there is nothing to he done pending the completion of this process. It would be a great gain to the city in case this wasteful competitive route had never been legally laid out; but it has been, and so much work has been done upon it that it must be allowed to run its course. But surely in view of the offer of the Interborougb Co., the Board of Esti¬ mate should agree to consider no bids which force the city to use up over $100,000,000 of its own credit in the con¬ struction of this Subway. If a bidder can be obtained who will build the Broadway-Lexington avenue line with his own funds and upon otherwise acceptable terms, he should, of course, be allowed to do so. On the other hand, if the bidder calls upon the city to devote all the credit, and more, that it can afford for Subway construction, to the Tri- Borough route; or, if in any other respect the bid is un¬ satisfactory, negotiations should he begun immediately with the Interborougb Company, and an arrangement should be reached on the basis of President Shonts' recent letter. The arrangement should include the third-tracking of the ele¬ vated roads as well as the Subway extensions. By these means New York would obtain a maximum increased ser¬ vice for a minimum expense, and a passenger could ride ali over this Subway or elevated system for the expenditure of one nickel. The advantages of such a plan are so great that the insistence of the Public Service Commission on its competitive independent route seems to be singularly ob¬ stinate and stupid. Whether it will be possible to hold the Interborough Company to the terms proposed in case the Broadway-Lexington avenue route should be built by private capital remains to be seen. In that case the city might have to make certain concessions, because it would have paral¬ leled the whole East Side line of the company. But in any case it looks as if the obstacles to some satisfactory arrange¬ ment were gradually being removed. ------------•------------ APPARENTLY, the. Mayor understands much more clear¬ ly than Mr. Willcox does the advantages which will accrue to the city through reaching some agreement with the Interborougb Company and through the operation of the whole Subway system by a single corporation; and it is for this reason that the recent proposals of the President of that company have been addressed to him instead of to the Pub¬ lic Service Commission. But he is not willing to make a decisive stand in favor of some arrangement with the In- torborough Company. In an interview last week, he stated clearly ttiat the fundamental question to be decided was whether the city government should favor an independent competitive Subway system or a comprehensive system op¬ erated by a single company; and he submitted the question to the enlightened public opinion of the city. But in a mat¬ ter of this kind public opinion is not enlightened. It needs to be directed towards reaching a proper decision. The Mayor can obtain support for his policy, if he has one, not by appealing to public opinion for help, but by giving public