New Britain herald., 1922-11-15
BIG ENGINEERING
 PROJECT EXPLAINED
Members Of Commonwealth Club
 Hear of Hudson River Bridge

The banquet hall of the Y. M. c. A.
 was crowded to capacity last night
 when the Commonwealth sat down to banquet for the first meeting of the season, and 10 hear J. Bernard Walk ed. editor of the Scientific Ameri-
 can." lecture on Bridging the Hud-
 son" By reason of It's being Thanks giving month, the tables were decorat-
 ed with pumpkins, apples and other fruits of the harvest.
 In Introducing the speaker of the
 evening, President B. B. Bassette of
 the club called attention to the fact
 that the subject. the proposed Hudson
 River bridge. was deserving of being
 rated as one of the seven wonders of
 the World.
 The speaker prefaced his lecture
 by showing stereoptican illustrations
 of some of the earliest as well as latest
 and most notable bridges of the world
 and ended by showing that this pro- connections and terminals will be the
 most stupendous engineering work yet
 undertaken, surpassing in that respect and in cost, the Panama Canal. It is to contain 450,000 tons of steel and will be of the suspension type with single central span of 5000 feet. It will be heavier than all five bridges now con- meeting New York with Brooklyn combined
 In connection with this matter. the following facts were presented to the club.
 Although New York is the greatest port in the world and forms the gate way through which passes one half of all the huge, sea-borne commerce of the United States, 1t has the most antiquated, inconvenient and costly system for the handling of its com merce of any of the great seaports.
 It's terminal facilities are so out of date and it's methods of handling freight from railroad to steamship are so slow and expensive that it cost as much to transfer ton of freight from the railroad terminal yards in Jersey City to a steamship or to merchant or to a factory or warehouse in New York as 1t does to haul that ton of freight by rail from point situated 800 miles from the seaboard.
 The cause of this heavy terminal | cost is to be found in the obstacle pre- sented by the deep and broad Hudson l river, which cuts of New York from l the mainland and brings nine of the great railway systems to an abrupt | stop in Jersey City
 Here the freight must be transfer red to lighters and barges, lowed by water to the docks nearest to its des- tination and unloaded to trucks and hauled to the consignee. All of this involves much hauling and rehaul- Ing, heavy, labor costs and conse- quent heavy, increase in the total freight charges.
 The Hudson river bridge is designed l .o wipe out the obstacle presented by | the Hudson river by building a huge | highway and railroad structure of sufficient size to accommodate the greater part of the railroad, motor ruck and automobile traffic between and the mainland.
 The depth of water and mud pre- yents the building of piers in the iver, consequently the vast double leck highway must be swung from hore to shore in single span, about of a mile in length.
 If the Hudson river bridge were to ,e erected along Broadway, New York. it would reach from Battery to Brand street. Its two end anchor lges, 800 feet high would overtop many of New York's tallest skyscrap- ,ers and. it's main towers would ex- .eed the Woolworth building by 50 eet. The proposed bridge would carry .6 motor trucks abreast on its upper leck and 12 steam railroad trains Lbreast on its lower deck. Each deck would be 225 feet wide.