Page:New York subway ventilation.djvu/18

16 a definite number of times per hour was not made clear. Hence we can fairly dismiss this report with all its recommendations as again failing utterly to accomplish any step in advance.

Criticisms Ignored

From 1908 on there appears to have been no further attempts to ventilate the subway, as far as official documents are available to the public, and certainly the public will not claim that any change in the operating conditions have been noticed. As a result the public has suffered and from time to time voiced its complaints with no noticeable benefit.

About the time of the settlement of the involved question relating to the building of new subways and extensions of the old, public criticism became so acute that the operators of the subway, the Interborough Rapid Transit Co., did install in the cars themselves, the "agitators," suggested by Mr. Reginald R. Bolton on Sept. 19th, 1906—only throwing, literally and figuratively, more dust in the eyes of the people!

Ventilation of New Subways

When on "March 19th, 1913, the City of New York by the Public Service Commission for the First District, entered into separate contracts with the Interborough Rapid Transit Co. and the N. Y. Municipal Railway Corp. for the construction, equipment and operation of the Dual system," the public again lifted up its voice in protest upon the subject of subway ventilation.

This protest first took shape in letters to the newspapers, editorials, comments, etc., calling attention to the conditions to which the travelling public seriously object and demanded from the designers of the subway the incorporation of a real remedy in the new subway.

When the plans of the proposed Broadway subway, as designed by the Rapid Transit Commission, became available for public inspection, this protest took a definite form. Amongst the first to voice an organized protest was the Broadway Association, who on Oct. 24, 1913, held a public meeting at the Hotel McAlpin at which many representative citizens and engineers spoke in unqualified condemnation of the plans providing for ventilation by cutting holes in the sidewalks along the route of the subway and adjacent to the retail stores. Much that has already been presented herein was brought out at this meeting which resulted in the appointment of a special committee to go further into the matter and take up consideration of the same with the proper authorities.

The method at that time proposed by the Public Service Commission is shown in Diagram F and is a representation of the typical vent chambers in which the 25 blowers were installed according to the design and specifications of Chief Engineer Rice.