The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-04-02
LINES
 IN NEW YORK
(Golden Age)

l In many western cities, and in
 some Eastern ones, automobile bus lines or jitneys, as they are commonly called, are familiar features of the streets, and are a byproduct of the precarious conditions into which the electric street railways have misnan- aged themselves It was character l istic of New York City to wait until all the other cities in the country had tried jitneys before having anything 1 to do with them, but the trolley
 strikes last fall forced the issue and 1 finally the jitney arrived.
 On account of the strikes, and for | other reasons, some of the electric 1 railway companies in Brooklyn and 1 Manhattan ceased operating e-r<aIn | lines which they found to be un-
 profitable, and operated other lines only part of the distance. The Board | of Estimates of the city, which is | the ruling power, considering that an emergency in the city's affairs had l arisen, undertook to bring about a remedy.
 The Board claimed that the changes in Brooklyn's transit facilities with
 the consequent creation of 970 new transfer points, caused such conges- ton of traffic and people at certain points as to threaten disorder, and
 that such disorders actually occurred
 They therefore put eighty busses at work in Brooklyn and a number in
 New York, temporarily, in some in stances, using policemen as checkers
 and starters at the bus terminals. It was astonishing how the people took
 to the new conveyances.
 On November 14th, IA of the
 busses carried 75,00o passengers
 d lo4
 that 150,O0O people were making use
 of them daily. It was not intended
 to run them beyond December, 31, 1919, but they became so popular that it did not seem wise to discontinue them at least during the season of icy sidewalks, and on January 9th it was estimated that in Brooklyn alone 5,2OO,OOO passengers had been carried upon them, with correspondingIy vast numbers in Manhattan
 It is not to be wondered at that the trolley companies have fought this innovation; for some of them were losing money even before the titneys came. The companies appeared in court asking for restraining orders oD this progressive movement, and the courts decided that the jitneys should be permitted to continue the use of the streets in the interests of the peo pie.
 When the trolley companies appear ed in court to ask for the injunction they used every kind of argument except the one they knew would not hold, i. e., that the people would not use the busses in any case They did say that the Brooklyn troIleys were carrying sixty times as many passengers as the busses and were carrying them Az miles as against the buses miles, and that the busses could not possibly be operated at a profit
 They went on to say that if the city gave up its street-cars and oper- ated busses exclusively it would lose S2,956 $500 due to the smaller carry ing capacity of the bussses, $6,OOO,- 900 in the longer haul S2,395,S99 in taxes and paving, S500,0OO in snow and $90O,00O in money paid for accidents, a total of S12,752, ,399.
 New York is so congested that it seems able to absorb and use every transit facility that is provided; and the city authorities are so well pleas