New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1876-06-06
RdpID TRANSIT.

The Injunction granted by Chief-Justice DAILY
against the Greenwich Street Elevated haii-
road Company has been sustained by the Ten
oral Term of the Common Pleas. The Court
holds that the act authorizing the projected
work il unconstitutional on account OF
certain defects which one would think might
easily have been avoided. 1t is misfortune
that a valuable work should be embarrassed
by technical defects of law; but we DO not
suppose there is anything more serious TO ap-
prehend than a vexatious delay ana the eN-
pense of litigation. The case will OF course DE
carried to the Court Of Appeals, and If neces-
sary to the Legislature; and ultimately tne
great want of New YOrk-rapid transit-wlll
BE supplied. Private interests cannot be al
lowed TO interfere forever with public neces-
sites
The ground upon which the injunction has
been urged appears to laymen unlearned In the
law as a remarkable discovery. After we nave
allowed street railways innumerable TO cut UP
some of orr best avenues and 0bstruct the
very busiest streets of traffic. it is suddenly
alleged that the city highways are in effect
the property of the owners of lots fronting on
them. and without the consent of this handful
of people. or at least without compensation TO
them. the city cannot use the streets Except
"for the ordinary purposes of traffic and
"travel,' no matter what may he the public
necessities. The Court of Common Pleas has
held that a rapid transit road is not one
of the ordinary means OF tralilc ana
travel In one sense that is true it is not
usual means first because it is new invention,
and secondly because the courts and the horse-car
companies have prevented its employment.
But suppose the same strict rule had been APP
piled to the surface railroads when they were
not usual means of travel. Suppose 1t had
been applied to Omnibuses when they were
first bnilt. Under the principles laid down by
the court we could not lawfully have admitted
any of the surface roads or the stage lines,
and if some ingenious benefactor OF the race
were TO devise still better way OF getting up
and down town than any yet proposed 1t would
be necessary to crush it under an injunction
as not being an ordinary means OF traihc
"and travel
The ordinary vehicles of one age are the
discarded lumber of the next, and in the in
depreciation of the law it seems strange that
courts should not recognize the constant prog
ress of invention and the constant change III
public necessities. There was time when an
elevated railway in Greenwch-st, not being
required by the condition of the city, would
have been simply nuisance to quiet people
who CHANGED to live beside it, and it ought
then to have been interdicted, as inconsistent
with the ordinary uses of the street. But to-
day John Patten, forbdding the completion of
the road, puts an obstruction in the way OF
the public, and interferes with the proper uses
of the street by stopping means of trans
portation which modern science has discovered
10 be the most convenient and economical for
orr present circumstances. John Patten will
have to step aside and let the locomotive pass.