New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1906-01-07
WEEDS OF BRookLYN TRANSIT.

There is a most encouraging prospect that the
consolidation of existing transit lines in Manhat-
tan and The Bronx under a single great mo-
nopoy will not be permitted to prevent or delay
materially the extension of the subway system,
or, rather, the construction of new subways, and
that it will not permanently destroy that Or
dered competition which in such matters is es-
sental to the best public service. Especially
pleasing Is the assurance that new lines will
promptly be pushed in Brooklyn, where perhaps
the need is greater than in any other part of the
metropolis. An extended system of subways
has been planned for that borough, and it is
confidently asserted that there will be no need
less delay in constructing them.
1t will be desirable however TO avoid care
fully in the planning Of that work some of the
evils which have been imposed upon the present
system of transit in Brooklyn and of transit
between Manhattan and Brooklyn. We hear, for
example, talk of Brooklyn subways and tunnels
under the East River with terminals in Man
haitian The one existing terminal" on Park
Row ought to be enough. The builders of new
routes between the boroughs will do well to
think hundred times more about connections
than terminals Every tunnel intended to bring
trainloads of Brooklyn people into Manhattan
should be planned not simply TO dump those peo-
pie at some one point, no matter how central, but
to switch them off upon Manhattan lines and dis
tribute them about this borough
1t will also be desirable to pay first attention to
the city that IS rather than TO the city that is
to be We mean that adequate transit facilities
should be provided for the vast population now
existing in the northern and central wards of
Brooklyn rather than that efforts should be
made to open up the outlying rural regions at
the south and east The building of subways or
other lines of travel across miles of open coun-
try would be advantageous to real estate specu-
ators, but that is not the end the city should
have in view in promoting such works. Four
fifths of the population of Brooklyn lie north
and west of Prospect Park and East New York,
Yet in many respects that great majority IS not
so well provided with transit facilities as the
minority lying beyond those limits. 1t is doubt
less a fine thing to be able TO ride in a half
! filed express train from Manhattan to Coney
Island in half an hour. But it is not so fine
thing TO be compelled to spend as much time, in
dangerously overcrowded train, to get only one
third of that distance into the heart of Brook
lyn. And the people who suffer the latter fate
are several times as numerous as those who en-
JOY the former privilege.
The mass of population is in the heart Of the
old city of Brooklyn, and it will be there for
many years to come, despite ell the develop
ment of the outlying regions. What is needed
most therefore is an increase of transit facili-
ties for that crowded region, so that it will be
possible to get to and from the Bedford and
Stuyvesant Heights districts, South Brooklyn,
the Prospect Park Slope, Flatbush. and even
old Brooklyn Heights, with comfort and expedi-
ton. When that is done it viii be easy mat
ter to extend the same facilities further to Fort
Hamilton, to Coney Island, to Jamaica and other
points But that former and more urgent need
should be supplied first.