Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-12-30

VIZ ASHINGTON, D. c., Dec. 25.-Under-
w ground travel has met with a serious
difficulty, and it cannot achieve the
great development which it should have I'M
til that difficulty has been removed
Perhaps you did not realize that under
ground travel has great future. AS mat
ter of fact, travel through the earth is sec
ond i'll Importance only to travel through the
air, as future means of speeding up trans
pOrtatiOn.
We have long had tunnels through hills
and under rivers, and these tunnels have
gradually become longer and longer with the
development of engineering. At present
tunnels are projected which would have been
considered impossible not many years ago
The states of New York and New Jersey are
getting ready to connect themselves by a
tunnel eight thousand feet long under the
Hudson river Pittsburg has made all plans
for boring hole nearly six thousand feet
long through one of the mountains which
make travel so laborious in that city. Many
similar projects exist in this country and Eu-
rope. In Chicago they are planning to have
tunnels under some of the busiest streets, so
that the heavier traffic will travel under
ground while the light vehicles have the sur
face The growth of heavy motor-truck
traffic will almost certainly make such two
story streets necessity in all large cities.
In word, the tendency is for traffic to bur-
row underground as we'll as to fly in the air.
But now all these projects whereby man
proposes to rival the mole as we'll as the bird
have been held up. The engineers, after a
little figuring have reached the realization
that while they can build tunnels over a
mile in length, they cannot guarantee that
modern traffic can use them with safety. If
long string of automobiles enters one of
these underground chambers, it is a gamble
whether the drivers of them will live to the
other end of the hole.
For internal combustion engines generate
carbon monoXide, and carbon monOXlde is a
deadly poison. A good many men have been
killed by this gas as result of crawling un-
der their machines when the engines were
running The gas at first into1iCates, some
what as alcohol does, and then kills. 1t is
generated by steam engines, and is the gas
Cor at least the principle of gas) which oc-
casionally overcomes passengers when trains
are stalled in tunnels. The Pennsylvania
railroad, because of this gas, now uses cleo
trical egines in going through the tunnel
just outside of Baltimore, which is an es-
pecially long, and badly ventilated one.
Now ii this gas can kill man in a garage
with one machine, what will it do when sew
eral thousand machines are crowded into a
long underground chamber? It is estimated
with regard to the proposed new Hudson rlv-
er tunnel that over two thousand machines
may pass through it within an hour. No one
can now say positively whether the drivers
of these machines would survive not For
no one knows how much carlo monoXide a
machine generates; the amount varies &C
cording to load, speed, carburetor adjust
ment, and many other factors. And nobody
knows how much carbon monoXide human
being can stand without becoming drunk or
dying.
Until these things are found out by sci