Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-10-01
NEW YORK'S SUBWAY
Biggest Thing of the Kind
Ever Undertaken.
FACTS AND FIGURES
EFFORTS TO SOLVE THE CITY
TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM.
Plans to Extend Underground Transit
in Manhattan and Brooklyn
Railroad Tunnels.
FACTS AND FIGURES

written for The Evening Star by Bassett Staines.
There are greater engineering works go
ing on in the world today. For example,
the construction of the Assouan dam and
the other irrigation works on the Nile,
which. as their creator, Sir William Garstin
proudly boasts. will live in the use and OBJ
servation of mankind long after the ancient
monuments of the Egyptians have disap-
peared beneath the sands of the Nubian
desert. But of its kind the New York SUBJ
way is the greatest thing yet done, and it Is
also the greatest engineering enterprise OF
any kind In the United States today.
1t will be opened throughout nearly the
whole of It's length in the course of the
present month, If strikes no not further de-
lay the completion of the work. 1t Is prac-
ticaily finished from the residential dis
trlcts away down town to the great bust
ness section around City Hail. Some work
Is still going on farther downtown toward
the Battery, and also at the northern ex-
tremity of Manhattan and on the Rroollvn
extension.
Time was when the Gothard and Mont
Gents tunnels were held to be considerable
holes In the earth. They are mere rabbit
purrows IN comparison with the vast shaft
whch mas been driven longitudinally
through the island of Manhattan
Or take, instead. the greatest excavations
made by vanished civilizations Great as
are the caves OF Elephanta and the tenn
pies or karnak and of Aboosimbel on the
Nile oank, the floor space of the stations of
the New York subway, taken together. is
greater than that of any two of them. and
when the Brooklyn and under the-river tun-
nels 10 be made are completed, such sta
tlonai areas will exceed in combined space
all the rock-hewn temples of the ancient
world known to archaeology"
Some Big Figures.
This Is the statement of an engineer con-
nected with the work who happens to be
gifted with poetic agination But none
the less he possesses that precision of detail
winch properly belongs to his profession,
FOR he has computed that the earth which
has been, or will be, excavated in the max
ing OF the subway amounts to exactly 17OU,-
Us cubic yards. The rock tunneIed amounts
to half a million yards; the rock excayated
ID more than double that quantity.
Here are some other figures which speak
LOT themselves as to the magnitude of the
work:
Steel used in the structure $4,000 tons:
cast iron, mere trif1e of 10000 tons: con-
crete far over 100000 cubic yards: water
PROBING, more than 10000 cubic yards;
brick, 10000 cubic yards; vault lights over
1000 each shedding it's beams for radius
Of many yards total length of track ap-
proaches. about $4,000 feet. These figures
do not include the great Brooklyn extern
sion by way of the Battery tunnel which
is already under way; or other schemes for
the extension of the subway service either
mooted or in active process of execution.
The Ptolemies and the third Rameses
bullded monuments in their day, but they
did nothing so vast this.
In the days of the Caesars" said a New
York engineer, ''Pliny tells us it took thirty
thousand men eleven weary years to cut
tunnel three and half miles long, Today,
employing less than twelve thousand men,
the New York masters of engineering me-
chanics have made tunnel equal in ca
pacity to one of over fifty miles in length
like that of Rome. to say nothing of some
ten miles of elevated structure and the ex-
cavation of extra areas for underground
By Comparison.
True, there are other underground roads
in the world; but, compared with them this
one is as "all Lombard street to China
orange" The famous "twopenny tube" in
London, for example, about covers the dis
lance from the battery to 42d street where
the real journey to the end Of the line is
hardly beginning.
1t has been carefully estimated by engi-
neers that if the subway were a single tun-
mel six feet high and three feet wide. it
would reach from New York to Chicago.
would reach from the metropolis to Cleve-
land. Three million cubic yards of hole
that is how one man connected with the
work summed it up.
While the excavations are going on mill
lions of feet of lumber being used to
prop up the streets so that the ordinary
traffic can go on. All the engineers en-
gagged in the enterprise are impressed by
Its magnitude. and cannot help stopping
now and then to indulge in the weirdest
kind of applied statistics" One of them
says that this timber employed in the |
false work. would build no fewer than
10, 900 two-story frame houses: while an |
other asserts that the rock taken out by |
the tunnel would make a respectable imi |
tation of the great wall of China, namely, a |
structure three feet thick, six feet high |
and about 500 miles long. f!
There is no doubt about 1.-THE New York |
subway is the greatest thing of its kind |
that mankind has yet done.
How It Was Built
The city of New York decided to have |
the subway constructed by contract and |
leased to the contractor for fifty years for |
an annual rental of rather more than the |
interest payable by the city on the bonds
issued. to provide means for the construc- |
ton. 1t is hardly credible, but it Is the
fact that of all the great contracting
gineers in the world only two could be |
found to put in bids Tor such a vast work. |
They were John B. Mcdonald and Andrew
Onderdonk.
Mcdonald asked for $35 600 900 in a round
sum. That was about the figure estimated |
by the engineer of the rapid transit COM
William Barclay Parsons. Onder-
lonk wanted $50, 100000 and certain con-
cessions. Mcdonald got the job, and has |
carried it out in a manner that has met
with the enthusiastic approval of many
engineers who have inspected |
his work.
rapid transit"-the elusive dream of |
New Workers for so many years-will be
something more than mere phrase when
the subway is running full blast. It is
provided by contract that local trains must
run at an average speed of not less than
fourteen miles an hour, including station
stops; while expresses must make thirty
miles an hour. 4 This will easily bring peo-
pie from Kingsbridge, at the northern point
Of Manhattan, down to the city hall in fif-
.een minutes. Visitors from ''out Of town"
will no longer be able to saw az thew al.