CHAPTER XIV

_THE SHALLOW UNDERGROUND SYSTEM_

“Through the faithless excavated soil See the unweary’d Briton delves his way.” BLACKMORE.

IN LONDON

Hitherto we have been considering Metropolitan Electric Railways constructed at considerable depths below the surface, or lifted up on high, as at the Liverpool Docks.

There is another system, however, and one that is strongly advocated by the London County Council, at present chiefly as a means of linking together existing tram lines by taking the cars underground through congested areas and bringing them to the surface again where the traffic is less dense.

In its ever-increasing congested condition, London reminds us of a patient afflicted with dropsy of long standing, susceptible to occasional alleviation, but hopelessly incurable. In Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian days the town gave no signs of this malady; but with Queen Victoria’s reign the germs of it became evident, and now the giant city lies prostrate in a state of helplessness that has baffled the most skilful engineering physicians, whose remedies, trains and trams and tubes, have been successful only in giving temporary relief to the sufferer, who forthwith resumes and even increases his original bulk.

For ages the ocean, without breaking its bounds, has absorbed the rivers and streams running into it; but imagine the process reversed, and the English and Irish Channels and the North Sea unrestrictedly pouring their torrents into the Thames, the Forth, or the Liffey! Only one result could ensue. The channels thus gorged with water, their currents would cease to flow. A similar fate threatens London, into whose narrow and inelastic fairways an Atlantic of traffic is ever pouring. One day the current will be unable to flow, and there will be a permanent condition of “block.” Then, and only then, perhaps, will a partial migration of town to country bring about a more natural state of things, and save this colossal city from utter collapse.

These shallow tramways of the London County Council are a novelty in England, but on a large scale have been successfully adopted in Paris, Buda-Pesth, Boston, and New York. At present the shallow subway which the Council has been authorised to construct at a total cost of £279,000, commences at Theobald’s Road, Holborn, where it forms a junction with an existing surface tramway, the property of the Council. Thence the line falls in level, until, in Southampton Row, it runs beneath the street, whence, in a trench of inconsiderable depth, it passes along the new thoroughfare, Kingsway, from Southampton Row to the new Strand crescent, Aldwych. There it turns towards the Embankment, on gaining which near Waterloo Bridge it again comes out to the surface. In its total length of about five-eighths of a mile it has four stations. Its motive power is electricity on the underground conduit third rail system. The cars, running singly, and at frequent intervals, are single-decked. It claims for its principle that the station platforms are readily accessible, so that instead of having to descend a great number of steps, or to enter a lift to reach the cars, passengers arrive there by means of a short well-lighted stairway; that the ventilation of the tunnels is perfect, and the speed of the cars equal to that of the trains, and as they run singly and close together, long waits are avoided, and thus they are specially suited for short-distance travelling. It also claims a general immunity from vibration.

To thoroughly understand how a complete system of shallow underground works we must go abroad to Paris, Buda-Pesth, Boston, and New York. I may remark that in describing this system a certain amount of repetition is inevitable.

PARIS

Paris has its “Twopenny Tube,” or rather its equivalent. On July 30th, 1900, Londoners for the first time travelled by a deep-level line from the City to Shepherds Bush, a distance of 5·77 miles; and a few days earlier, on the 19th of the same month, the Electrical Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris--the main channel of an elaborate system that links together every district of the capital--was opened for traffic. This chief artery connects at the fortifications, the Porte Maillot with the Porte de Vincennes, a distance of 6·6 miles. In other words, it crosses Paris diagonally from north-west to south-east; from a point at the north of the Bois de Boulogne to another at the north of the Bois de Vincennes; the eighteen stations (including terminals) on the main line being Porte Maillot, Rue D’Obligado, Place de L’Etoile (Arc de Triomphe), Avenue de L’Alma, Rue Marbœuf, Champs Elyseés, Place de la Concorde, Tuileries, Palais Royal, Louvre, Châtelet, Hotel de Ville, St. Paul, Place de la Bastille, Gare de Lyons, Rue de Reuilly, Place de la Nation, and Porte de Vincennes.

On the Métropolitain there is a three-minutes’ service of trains during the day, and a six-minutes’ service at night. On the London Tube the intervals vary from two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half minutes in the day, while at night they are the same as in Paris, both railways being open for some twenty hours out of the twenty-four.

In Paris two classes of passengers are provided for: first and second. The former are called upon to pay 2½_d._, the latter 1½_d._, for any length of journey. Up to nine a.m., second-class, or workmen’s tickets, are issued for 2_d._, the return half being available for the remainder of the day.

Thus, as regards date of opening, length of line, service of trains, and average fares, there is a close similarity between the English and French lines; but the system is widely different. In London we burrow deep; in Paris they go just beneath the surface, the authorities after much hesitation having adopted the shallow underground system. Our Tube trains are shot through huge iron pipes penetrating the subsoil at depths varying from sixty to a hundred feet, and to get at the rail level, passengers must take a perpendicular journey in a big lift. But their Parisian counterparts trip down a few steps and along a brightly-lighted, white-tiled tunnel, so beautifully ventilated and smokeless--electricity being the motive power--that an enthusiastic expert declares its atmosphere to be “perfectly clean and sweet.” The tunnels are as near the surface as possible, and on the greater part of the line the keystones of the masonry arches are only about 3 feet 6 inches below the street level. The excavations were at first attempted by means of shields, as in “tubular” work; but this had to be abandoned in favour of the time-honoured “cut and cover” plan employed in the construction of our early underground railway.

When the great Parisian scheme is completed upon a twentieth-century model, much more finished and convenient in many ways than any of ours in London, it will comprise a total length of 38·86 miles of track, seven-tenths being laid in shallow covered trenches, the remainder in open cuttings or on viaducts, the entire cost being estimated at twelve million sterling. An interesting feature of the scheme is that each section is self-contained and ends in loops, so that shunting is obviated. No trains run from any one distant strip of line into another, but where there are crossings, or where the termini touch, there are stations to facilitate changing. This arrangement ensures a rapid service, maintained with regularity and punctuality on each section. Like our “Tube,” the success of the Parisian Métropolitain was from the first immense, and at the end of ten months showed a return of over forty million passengers.

BUDA-PESTH

Along the Boulevard Andrassy at Buda-Pesth there is a shallow electric tramway built upon similar principles, a few feet under the main thoroughfare, which is by no means a failure, financially or otherwise.

BOSTON

Now let us cross the Atlantic, and note what has been effected at Boston and New York.

The former--the picturesque old-world capital of the State of Massachusetts, with its population of over a million--is familiarised to every schoolboy who knows anything of history and the War of Independence, with the city where the tea was thrown into the harbour by Colonials disguised as Mohawks, an incident that indirectly brought about the creation of the United States. It is a city also sacred to literati as being the home of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and is so old-fashioned--or so excessively up-to-date, whichever you please--that, until recently, neither cabs, omnibuses, tubes, or underground railways were to be found within its boundaries. What with the uneven surface and the labyrinth of the streets, Boston is picturesque in spite of itself, and its old buildings emphasize this. There are the two New England meeting-houses. The “Old South” has been proudly preserved in its ancient state, although the ground on which it stands is almost as valuable as that in the City of London. Architecturally, it is a brick barn, with a pretentiously ugly steeple. “Old North” has an equally plain body, but from its steeple, as a tablet affixed to it sets forth, “the signal lantern of Paul Revere warned the country of the march of the British troops to Lexington and Concord.” King’s Chapel, another ecclesiastical antiquity of Boston, was, for a quarter of a century after 1749, the place of worship of the official British colony, and accordingly became an eyesore to the earnest puritanical Bostonians.

But Boston cannot, like Charlestown, South Carolina, boast of a St. Michael’s Church, famous for its beautiful steeple, so greatly resembling that of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields as to suggest that probably they were both designed by the same architect, Gibbs, one of Wren’s pupils.

In the Act passed by the State Legislature authorising the construction of the Boston subway, it was stipulated that its length should be some five miles, and its total cost not more than one and a half million pounds sterling.

The construction of the subway was begun at the Public Gardens, where an incline, a hundred yards long, carries the surface lines into the tunnel, passing under the edge of Boston Common to Tremont Street. It is joined by a branch subway from Pleasant Street, where another incline leads to the surface. From this junction the subway proceeds beneath the Tremont Street side of the Common to Park Street, which is the central point of the system. Thence it is carried directly beneath Tremont Street to Scollay Square, and by means of a bifurcation under Hanover Street on the one hand and Cornhill on the other to a junction under Washington Street. The tunnel continues under Washington Street to Haymarket Square, and immediately rises by an incline to Causeway Street, where it connects with both the surface and the elevated lines. Wherever possible, the subway was carried out by open excavations, and, as in the Paris Métropolitain, by the old-fashioned “cut and cover” method. The roof of the tunnel is generally about three feet below the surface, though in some places considerably lower. At and near the stations the subway sides are lined with white glazed bricks, whitewash being used elsewhere.

There are five stations in the Boston shallow underground, viz. at Boylston Street, Park Street, Adams Square, Scollay Square, and Haymarket Square. These are approached by short stairways, protected from the weather by neat clock-surmounted kiosks, or small iron structures, in shape resembling our cab shelters, and placed at convenient points, either on the sidewalks or--where there is sufficient width--in the centre of the

roadway. Passengers can thus, by about twenty-five steps, go to and from the platforms in a few seconds. The ticket-offices are at the bottom of the stairways. The passenger returns at Park Street (the busiest station) are among the largest in the world, being 28,000,000 per annum.

The Boston surface street cars adopt the overhead trolley principle of electric traction, and the elevated railway-cars the third rail system, both these systems being continued throughout the subway.

The subway is illuminated electrically, but a considerable amount of natural light is also obtained, especially at the stations; and Captain Piper, deputy of the New York Police, when on a visit to London last February, discussing the question of ventilation in tube railways, gave it as his opinion that the freshest air he had “struck” in an underground railway was at Boston. “The air,” he said, “is excellent.”

The subway is, of course, perfectly clean, smokeless, and comparatively quiet; neither in the streets can any noise be heard from the cars that are continually passing close beneath. By an extension of the subway under Boston harbour, the surface lines in the district of East Boston are connected with the main system, thus making the entire length eight miles of single track.

NEW YORK

In New York, after much careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of deep tunnels (tubes) and shallow railways, the Rapid Transit Commissioners decided upon the latter as being likely to give the best facilities for quick travelling. On account of its peculiar peninsular shape, admitting of extension in one direction

only, the problem of transportation in the Empire City is comparatively easy, the routes being straight, and no necessity existing for intercommunication as in London. But, on the other hand, the number of persons to be carried morning and evening is greater.

Instead of the arched roof and masonry side-walks of the ordinary underground, there is a rectangular structure with a framework of steel beams riveted together, concrete enclosing the erection completely at the top and sides, and forming the bottom, rows of steel columns helping to support the roof between the tracks--in other words, a kind of Britannia Bridge let into the surface of the earth. The line has four tracks, the two centre ones being reserved for an express service (30 miles an hour), with stations 1½ miles apart. On the other tracks the stations are closer together, about four to the mile. So that there are two kinds of stations; one with platforms on the outside of the outer (or slow) track (at which only local trains stop), and another with platforms for fast trains only, and island platforms for either local or express trains. At the former stations the subway is sufficiently deep to allow of a bridge over the entire four tracks, with staircases leading to the various platforms. By means of loops, and, in places, by the lowering of the express track beneath the local tracks, crossings and switchings at the termini are, as in the Paris Métropolitain, eliminated, and the cars run continuously without any shunting whatever.

Its general scheme is as follows. Starting with a loop round the General Post Office, a four-track route is taken direct to the Grand Central Station in 42nd Street. It then turns west along 42nd Street to Broadway, and proceeds under Broadway to 104th Street, a distance of seven miles. Here the four tracks divide, a

double track continuing along Broadway to Kingsbridge, and another double track going in an easterly direction under the Harlem river to the Bronx district. Each of these branches is seven miles long, making a total length, for the whole system, of twenty-one miles, seven being for four track and fourteen for double track. The northerly ends of the double-track line are on the surface for a combined distance of about five miles, the remainder being shallow underground. At convenient points inclines lead to the surface from the subway, and are linked to street trams and elevated railroads. Electricity is exclusively used for traction and lighting, and the cost of the entire scheme was originally estimated at £7,000,000.

Now, what is the conclusion to be come to as to the adaptability of the shallow underground system to our vast metropolis, whose station at Liverpool Street is the busiest in the world, with its “turnover” of forty-five millions of passengers per annum; St. Lazare, at Paris, coming next with forty-three millions?

In newly-constructed thoroughfares provision for shallow subways, and for sewers, pipes, cables, etc., can be easily made; but in old-established streets the difficulty and expense in making them would be formidable, as vaults and cellars used for business purposes frequently extend right across the narrow carriageways, and a perfect network of conduits would have to be displaced and moved either below or alongside the subway.

Some idea of the cost of interfering with sewers may be gathered by the fact that in constructing the New York subway an entirely new outfall sewer, over six feet in diameter, had to be built one mile in length! On the other hand, labour is cheaper in this country than in America, and in London there is no rock to be removed as in New York.

In conclusion, I would quote from the report of Lieutenant-Colonel Yorke, who was sent over to Paris two or three years ago by the Board of Trade to inspect the Métropolitain. He thinks that as regards convenience for passengers and economy of working, the balance of advantage lies with the shallow tunnel or subway as compared with the deep-level tube. But he hesitates a little when confronted with the thought of what would happen to London while its roadways were in process of being undermined. The difficulties in the way of adopting the subway would, he says, be great, though he does not emphatically declare that he considers them prohibitive; and he approves of the attempt made to introduce the system in the manner adopted by the London County Council beneath the new street between Holborn and the Strand.