PART III
_Surveys and a City Plan_
[Sidenote:
Pittsburgh's Need for Surveys]
No city of equal size in America, or perhaps in the world, is compelled to adapt its growth to such a difficult complication of high ridges, deep valleys, and precipitous slopes, as Pittsburgh. By consequence no other city has such imperative need of accurate and comprehensive surveys, as a basis for the layout of streets, sewers, and all public works, for the purpose of avoiding the extravagant mistakes, misfits, and reconstructions that are bound to result from groping, piecemeal work done amidst such obstacles.
New York, Baltimore, Washington and other American cities, where the need is far less crying than in Pittsburgh, have awakened to the importance of modern, accurate and comprehensive topographical maps as a basis for the intelligent and economical planning of public improvements, and have provided themselves therewith. But Pittsburgh, having less excuse for the omission and paying a heavier penalty for the blunders to which it gives rise, lags in the same class with too many unprogressive cities in this country where the official surveys are merely incomplete and casual records of streets, properties and public works, gradually accumulated through a long series of years. These records consist, for the most part, of independent piecemeal surveys of all degrees of accuracy and inaccuracy, made for all sorts of purposes, and of compilations and transcripts of these piecemeal records patched together in attempts to reconcile irreconcilable data.
It is not necessary to give a long list of examples of the incompleteness and the inaccuracy of much of the old data of which the Bureau of Surveys is the official repository in Pittsburgh. Every surveyor and engineer in Pittsburgh with whom I have talked, whose work has given him occasion to use this data, is familiar with the conditions; with the fact that the tapes used in the original surveys of different parts of the city differed in length and that the errors were never compensated, so that today, measurements in different parts of the city have to be made with special tapes of particular degrees of inaccuracy in order to conform to the records; with the fact that independent bench marks are used in different parts of the city and that discrepancies of several feet, and sometimes of unknown amount, in elevation occur in the records of adjacent or intersecting streets; with the fact that an extraordinarily large proportion of the streets are not marked by any permanent monuments, and that there is no adequate system for protecting the monuments that do exist, so that the City often has no sure recourse against abutting owners who have encroached upon a street; and finally, that no general official surveys whatever exist of the complicated topography of the undeveloped areas. And yet through these undeveloped areas, streets and sewers and other public works are almost daily being extended without knowledge of what lies beyond, although from the back regions soon to be developed, _somehow, sometime, outlets must be provided_.
The city charter places upon the Bureau of Surveys the onerous and important duty of reporting favorably or unfavorably to Councils upon the plan of every new street proposed to be laid out by any one whomsoever within the city; yet the Bureau, presumably through lack of funds, has never had the data in hand upon which _alone_ such a report could be intelligently based.
No criticism of the present Bureau, or indeed of its predecessors, is intended in these remarks. The blame falls upon the whole system of penny-wise, pound-foolish, hand-to-mouth procedure in regard to city surveys that has been characteristic of a large proportion of American cities in the past, and of Pittsburgh with the rest. It is earnestly recommended that Pittsburgh should take example from the cities of Europe and from such American cities as New York, Baltimore and Washington. And because its peculiar topography is bound to make the evil results of unprogressive medieval methods more serious than in other cities, it should take the pains to surpass, rather than to lag far behind, in this respect.
[Sidenote:
Objects To Be Secured]
In outline the objects to be secured are these: _(a)_ An accurate framework of reference points needs to be established, including: 1. The gradual systematic setting of permanent street monuments throughout the city to serve as reference points for the definite determination of street locations and for all public and private local surveys. 2. The accurate determination of the locations and elevations of these and other monuments and bench marks in reference to a single general system of coördinates and in reference to the United States Government bench. 3. As a means of accomplishing these ends, an accurate geodetic triangulation of the district, supplemented by the necessary precise traverse work and precise leveling, all fully checked and compensated for errors.
_(b)_ The existing local surveys and records need to be tied into the accurate framework thus established, and in cases which show deficiencies or discrepancies beyond a reasonable and carefully defined standard of accuracy, they need to be gradually, in due turn, re-surveyed and re-plotted.
_(c)_ Complete topographical maps, based upon the framework first described, should be prepared upon some uniform system beginning in those sections where public works are immediately contemplated and gradually extended so as to cover the whole area into which the city's growth is likely to spread.
In the facts which would be gathered in the above process, and only in such facts, can a safe basis be found for plans that will provide the most economical and effective layout of new streets, sewers, parks, water system--in short for a city plan that will minimize the total draft on the taxpayers for public works and give the maximum results for money expended.
[Sidenote:
Technical Procedure]
The actual steps of technical procedure called for, in addition to the present routine work of the Bureau of Surveys, appear to be about as listed below. I omit at this point any consideration of the method of deciding on the plans for future improvements--the city planning proper, which would be based on the surveys--or of the procedure for enforcing any part of a city plan when adopted, and consider only the work of recording and mapping.
The steps that are mentioned last are more or less dependent upon those mentioned first, for any given area of the city, but the several steps of the work would be carried on more or less simultaneously, and some of the results would become available for use at once. 1. The establishment of reference points by triangulation and precise traversing and leveling throughout the district, and the reduction of these points to a general coördinate system. 2. The surveying, in relation to the new coördinate system, of existing street monuments and reference points, and of existing buildings, fences, bound-stones, and other evidences of ownership; and the preparation of general topographical maps. 3. The determination of the correct location of the legal boundaries of streets and public properties, and the translation of the old descriptions, running lines, etc., into terms of correct descriptions related to the new coördinate system. 4. The verification or correction of the legally established street profiles in terms consistent with the real distances and levels. 5. The setting of additional street monuments. 6. The draughting and publication of maps.
[Sidenote:
Maps]
The maps might ultimately include the following features, every one of which is to be found in the maps of one or another of the progressive cities of this country and Europe, and many of them in all.
_(a)_ A general one-sheet map of the city and vicinity, showing the streets, the boundaries of civil divisions, the coördinate system, and the locations of primary reference points and bench marks. This will serve as an index to the maps on a larger scale.
_(b)_ A general topographical map in sections, to be published by lithography, one sheet at a time as completed, on a scale of (say) 200 feet to the inch, showing all existing streets and roads, buildings, property lines, surface grades (by contours and points) and other topographical features, and all monuments and benches. This might be, and should be, so arranged that new and corrected editions of individual sheets could be gotten out at reasonably frequent intervals so as to keep it permanently up to date. Moreover it could well be made to serve all the purposes of the inaccurate but useful real estate atlases now gotten out by private enterprise. A charge of (say) twenty-five cents a sheet would cover the cost of printing, and, if some form of loose-leaf atlas cover were gotten out into which new editions of single sheets could be inserted, the public could obtain, at no extra cost to the city, and for a price about equal to that charged for the ordinary real estate atlas, a much more useful and accurate and up-to-date volume. Of course this map would serve all the purposes of the assessors' maps far better than anything they have now, and, if experience in other cities is any criterion, would lead to the discovery of a good deal of untaxed property.
To accomplish the above purposes the best method of reproduction would probably be to have the maps engraved on aluminum sheets, from which transfers can be quickly and cheaply made at any time to a lithographic stone for printing. Such sheets can be readily and indefinitely corrected.
_(c)_ Record sheets at a much larger scale, showing all the information contained on the small scale sheets and also construction details relating to public properties, especially streets, such as pipes, sewers, conduits, etc.; to be prepared at first for limited areas only but gradually extended.
_(d)_ A system of indexing and filing, to include, to keep track of, and to keep up to date, the records of existing physical conditions in areas covered by the surveys. This would include keeping track of the legal instruments affecting the physical conditions within streets and other public properties, or affecting the control over them; such as deeds, ordinances, and other instruments relating to the layout and grades of streets, permits and franchises for the construction or maintenance of anything within them, executive orders for new constructions or changes, and inspectors' reports of new constructions and changes actually made. As a part of this indexing and correcting system, provision could readily be made for periodical transmission of information as to changes in property ownership from the Assessors' Office (originally from the Registry of Deeds) to the Bureau of Surveys, so as to permit keeping the record maps always up to date and accurate. By means of similar transmission of records from the office of the Building Inspector, the record maps could be kept up to date with respect to new buildings. A typewritten multigraph notice of changes and corrections from all sources, made on the record sheets, could be mailed monthly to all the city Bureaus and others having sets of prints, and at longer intervals new and corrected prints of certain sheets would be offered. This would be the same general plan that is followed in regard to changes and corrections on the charts of the Coast Survey and the official Coast Pilot books, where the Notices to Mariners are issued periodically from the Hydrographic Office, and summed up at longer intervals by new editions of the several volumes and of the various charts stamped to show the dates to which they are corrected.
[Sidenote:
Management and Cost]
It would seem advisable to put a first-class man of broad experience and ability in charge; to establish a new division under the Bureau or Surveys, coördinate with the existing force, which is dealing with the current routine work, but distinct from it; and to go at the work with an annual appropriation amounting, after the first six months or so devoted to organization, to say $50,000 a year until the arrears of work shall have been cleaned up.
[Sidenote:
Sample Maps]
The following data in regard to the topographical survey work of New York and of Baltimore is of considerable interest in this connection. There are on file in the office of the Civic Commission single copies showing the kind of sectional topographical maps published by the official surveys of New York, of Baltimore, of the District of Columbia and of Zurich, Switzerland (representing European cities); and a sheet of the large-sized detailed sectional map published by the City of Paris, which covers the whole city at the scale of ¹/₅₀₀ or about 40 feet to the inch.
[Sidenote:
New York]
In the City of New York, for the first four years after the consolidation in 1898, the work of preparing a comprehensive topographical map, and, upon the basis thereof, a general plan of streets, was in the hands of the Board of Public Improvements; but most of the work has been done since the establishment of independent Topographical Bureaus in 1902. It is now proposed by the Comptroller that the Bureaus of the several Boroughs be again centralized under the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. The triangulation, upon which the whole work depends, was done in coöperation with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.
The following tables indicate the magnitude of the work and the amounts expended up to December 31, 1909, the force required to prosecute the work and a detailed analysis of the cost of the work in the Borough of Queens. The last table is taken from a report of Assistant Engineer H. K. Endemann to W. C. Elliott, Engineer-in-charge. In the first table, no data are given as to Manhattan and Brooklyn because of the abnormal conditions which they present.
AMOUNT AND COST OF WORK
Bronx | Queens | Richmond | Totals ------------------------------------------+-----------+----------+---------- Population (1910) 430,980 | 283,041 | 85,969 | Total area in acres 26,523 | 75,111 | 36,480 | 138,114 Triangulation (in acres) 26,523 | 75,111 | 36,480 | 138,114 Topographical Survey (in acres) 26,523 | 55,118 | 18,430 | 100,141 Tentative Street Maps Approved | | | (in acres) 18,700 | 19,661 | 6,300 | 44,661 Final Maps Approved (in acres) 13,000 | 9,912 | 6,300 | 29,212 Expenditures 1902 1909 $779,916 |$1,281,946 | $839,975 |$2,901,837 Recommended for 1910 $160,395 | $362,752 | $218,000 | $705,147
On March 31, 1910, the forces of the several topographical Bureaus of New York were as follows:
----------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------- | Bronx | Queens |Brooklyn |Richmond | Totals ----------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------- Engineers in charge and | | | | | principal assistant | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 6 engineers | | | | | | | | | | Assistant engineers | 17 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 65 | | | | | Transitmen, computers and | 26 | 53 | 17 | 41 | 137 draftsmen | | | | | | | | | | Chainmen, rodmen, axemen | | | | | and levelers | 21 | 18 | 12 | 17 | 68 | | | | | Clerical | 3 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 16 | | | | | Laborers | 7 | 62 | 11 | 25 | 105 | | | | | Foremen, drivers and others | 3 | 15 | 2 | 8 | 28 | | | | | Total | 78 | 171 | 65 | 111 | 425 | | | | | Expenses recommended for |$160,395 |$326,752 | $80,000 |$218,000 |$785,147 1910 | | | | | ----------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------
The work is expected to be so far advanced as to permit of material reductions in the present staffs at the following dates: in the Bronx, December 1911; in Queens, April 1915; in Brooklyn, April 1913; in Richmond, June 1911.
A detailed analysis of the cost of the work in the Borough of Queens, dated October 14, 1910, is subjoined:
Cost per acre to Estimated cost per acre date of complete work
Topographical Survey including } Field $8.13 Field $8.06 preparation of maps of street} Office 2.23 Office 2.23 system and grades } ------ ------ } Total $10.36[22] Total $10.29[22]
Monumenting, including final } Field 27.92 Field 20.44 traversing and preparation } Office 10.89 Office 7.89 of final map sections } ------ ------ } Total $38.81[22] Total 28.33[22]
[Sidenote:
Baltimore]
In Baltimore the work of preparing an accurate and comprehensive topographical and property map was begun in 1893 by a Topographical Survey Commission created for the purpose. The area completely mapped was about thirty square miles although the triangulation necessarily extended over a considerably larger area. The first two-thirds of the area mapped was completed in about two years; the cost, including all field work, office work, draughting, and publication, was about $5,000 per square mile. Allowing for the normally higher costs of all work in New York as compared with Baltimore, and allowing for the fact that the Baltimore figures include little if any street monumenting or final record maps of layout, this figure corresponds very closely with the cost of $10.29 per acre or $6,585.60 per square mile reported from the Borough of Queens.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] The difference between the cost per acre to date and the estimated cost per acre of completed work is due to the initial cost of organization and to the cost of general work, such as triangulation and traversing, which must be done at the start for the whole or most of the area to be surveyed.