The Sunday tatler and Jersey City express. (Jersey City, N.J.) 1883-1886, 1885-06-21
TAXING A RAILROAD.
NEW FACTORS IN EALUING R4TLROAD
PROPERTY.
Lands Worth Three Times as Mach for
"a. IL. Purposes as for Any Other

Lands Worth Three Times as M uch for
a. Il. Purposes as for Any Other.-
The Great Railroad CertIorarf Case.
Civil Engineer Edlow W. Harrison. who.
with Mr.. Sites, is engaged by the State
Board Of Assessors in fixing the value of
the railroads in the State, completed his
direct testimony on Friday afternoon. in
the New Jersey Central Railroads appeal
from the State Board valuations of its
property. Mr. Harrison has been under
examination for five or six weeks, and has
shown the methods pursued by the State
Board in arriving at the value of railroad
property in the State. The TArrLER has
in previous issues explained these methods,
and shown their application, as far as Mr..
Harrison's testimony uncovered them. But
the witnesses testimony of Friday showed
that the values, of lands esp ecially. as first
determined, were not the final values on
which the State based its tax bills against
the railroad company. A multiple enters
into the calculation Mr. Harrison and the
experts fixed the value of lands used by the
railroad for railroad purposes, as the Tart
LER has aiready reported, by the values of
adjoining property and the worth of adj
joining property was aseertained from
deeds by which it had been transferred from
one owner TO another, and by consultation
with real estate experts familiar wiah the
value of such lands. This was. however.
only one step in the calculation BY which
the value of the railroad bed was finally
determined. During the course of his ex
animation, Mr.. Harrison 6had incident, Iv
pointed outwhere farm lands had been solI
for from seven to ten tiinet the price fixed
by the State Board upon the contiguous
stretch OF road bed. In one instance he
valued stretch of road bed at only abou;
the twentieth part of the value of an nd
joining piece OF prop rty in the hands of
private owners. Friday he testified that as
matter of fact the value of the 100 feet
main roadway CT the N NV Jersey Central is
three to five times that of 100 feet of adj
joining property. The moments it is learned.
he testified, that TO continue the ne Of
a railroad a certain piece of property must
be had, it's price goes up. Ga the other
hand, the presence of railroad, in a CITY
especially, depreciates the vnlue Of property
lying around and about it. He instanced
a section of Newark, once the home of rich
people that had been destroyed by the rail-
road, so as to be useful only for tenement
purposes. Another instance he referred 10
was the section of Bergen Hill, nzighbor-
ing upon the g Cntt." Time was when the
whole region there was u blooming garden.
whore people of means built themselves
handsome homes To-day it can only be reEt.
ed for comparatively low figures. Poorer
classes are gradually invading the district,
and eventually it will be teneDent district
like Railroad avenue. Ia view of this pai
pable depreci alton, contiguous PROPERTY
cannot serve as a conclusive basis for com
parlson IN arriving at the values of rail
road property, which is worth in the
case of the main stem of the Cen
trail, three times as much, as rule.
as adjoining property; and in case of the
Newark and New York Rail Road times
as much. So that the taxable value of the
Central's property, in the main stem, was
ascertained by multiplying the total value
of the land 1t covered, as based on the
value of adjoining land, by 81 and in the
Newark and New York Branch. by 5.
There were two other factors in the com-
putation to which he had made incidental
reference One of these was the shrinkage
in the earth embankments For every eleven
yards of earth taken from the "borrow
pits, only 10 remained to be measured on
the embankments made of the borrowed
earth. The other yard was lost iu the
natural settling of the clay. He figured
therefore an additional 10 per cent. to the
measured value of the entertainments, TO
ascertain their actual value. This amounted
on the main stem Of the Central to $I25. 900.
A third factor to which he had made only
incidental reference heretofore was the
expenditures for Office expenses, engineer
ing, ETC., incurred while the road was In
process of construction. His calculations
showed that this item, in the case Of the
Central, reached a total of 100000.
Ex-Judge Hoffman will probably put a
new witness on the stand tomorrow. Mr..
Harrison's cross-examination will not prob
ably be begun for week yet.