New-York tribune., 1918-08-03
Shuttle Plan
Cancelled After
Day of Chaos
Continued from page I

way to the Grand Central trains and
to the Times Square Station.
Commuters, West Siders, Bronx
dwellers, all mingled in the one chan
mel which connects the old subway with
the shuttle train. This was the low
ceilinged tunnel which formerly led to
the Greensboro subway, and is now
used also to make the connection be-
tween the east side of the subway al"
and the central bar, or Times Square
shuttle. 1t took five minutes to push
through this tunnel last night. Had it
been much longer, the endurance of the
crowd would have snapped.
There was similar narrow channel
at the Times Square station, but this
was not quite SO long; neither was it so
fearfully congested last night, owing to
the fact that many persons who had
braved the Greensboro tunnel escaped
to the New York Central trains, and
others caught the surface cars and ele-
waited. Only persons who lived on the
upper West Side, and those who were
SO perpleXed by the tumult that they
didn't know where they were going,
passed into the Times Square station
at 6 o'clock. However, the crush here
was so bad that tifty-two police re-
serves were called out to assist the
lnterborough officials in keeping order.
Inc presence Oh number of wooden
horses and remnants of scatfolding in
this passage made it doubly difficult.
and the crowd stumbled over planks
left in the pathway.
"Will Be Better-Soon"
lnterborough officials declared that
all the confusion was natural at the
beginning of the new service. They
said that the situation would STRAIGHT
n J.,
public became more familiar with the
new routes.
The fact remained that there were
lew, II any, signs conspicuously dis
played at the new Grand Central and
the old Times Square stations. Some
or the old signs that remained only
added to the confusion. Few of the
Shonts guides displayed any more
knowledge of the new routes than the
people who were attempting to use
them. One or two of the women ticket
choppers at the Times Square station
did give intelligent directions to the
hundreds Of inquirers, and they were
blessed. The police who entered the
labyrinth of dismay were as ignorant
on the subject as the great majority of
the travelling public. They directed
their energies toward maintaining or
der, with small success.
The majority seemed to have the
idea that they must transfer either at
going in both directions.
Thousands acted on this theory and
proceeded to disembark when these
points were reached, only to find that
II they had stayed on the trains they
would have reached their destinations
much more quickly No one seemed to
understand the use of the northeast
ern leg, forming the through upper
East Side and Bronx service, or the
southwestern leg. forming the through
uowntown service on the West Side of
this quadrupedal "H" conundrum.
There was absolutely no necessity of
Square or Grand Central unless a
passenger wanted to reach the Grand
Central Station, or in the case of a
traveller from the upper West Side
VINO desired to reach Brooklyn. For
through service on either side of the
city the "bar sinister" should not fig
ure, as explained by the transit off,
cials yesterday In fact, they desire to
publicly urge the people to avoid using
the shuttle trains for transfer pur-
poses as far as possible. They ex-
planned that it was a simple diaeram
to remenber if people utilizing through
service on either side of the city would
fix in their minds that the crosstown
line at Forty Street had been
eliminated; that East Siders used the
new subway only above Forty-second
Street, while West Siders used the new
line entirely below Forty-second Street.
Old Signs Confusing
The most inexcusable cause for the
congestion was the misleading direc-
tions on the old signs left in the sta
tions, and the lack of any new ones.
Passengers going into the mystic maze
from the Queensborough subway would
have had no difficulty in getting down
town If they had not been misled by
signs with an arrow pointing down
town, apparently telling them to take
such stairway for downtown trains.
Instead of that. the downtown ar
rows were directing Queensborough
passengers to uptown trains on the
Lexington Avenue subway. In this
way thousands OF passengers went to
the wrong platforms and had to gropc
their way back through n surging
crowd and wander about until they
found the right stairway The Pub
r.