Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/813

Rh, therefore, that all the efforts that are being made to secure convenient and cheap rapid transit in great cities are those which should bring to their support the help of all men who are seeking the improvement of the condition of the masses.

Business extension in cities is crowding the street area. This area is precisely the same in old cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, etc., for the present population and business operations that existed a century ago. The crowding of streets with the transportation essential for the movement of goods increases with great rapidity, but when the crowding is augmented, perhaps doubled, by the presence of the means of transporting passengers, the difficulties involved are almost appalling. With every increase of population the companies having in charge transportation facilities must, in order to accommodate the public, add more cars and more animals—if animals are the motive power—and so rapidly add to the already crowded condition of streets. This process is one which attacks the health and the safety of the people. The presence of so many horses constantly moving through the streets is a very serious matter. The vitiation of the air by the presence of so many animals is alone a sufficient reason for their removal, while the clogged condition of the streets impedes business, whether carried on with teams or on foot, and involves the safety of life and limb. It is a positive necessity, therefore, from this point of view alone, that the problems connected with rapid transit should be speedily solved, and this feature demands the efforts and the support of sanitarians. With the removal of tracks from the surface, and with tunnels built in such a manner as to be free from the dampness of the old form of tunnel, as has been done in London, and to secure light and air and be easy of access, all the unsanitary conditions of street-railway traffic will be at once and forever removed; and if private capital can not be interested to a sufficient extent to undertake such measures, then municipal governments must see to it that the health of the community is not endangered by surface traffic. When this question is allied to the ethical one, and when one considers the advantages to be gained, first, through securing rapid transit from the crowded portions of cities to the suburbs, and, second, by removing rapid transit traffic from the surface to underground viaducts, the importance of the whole problem becomes clearly apparent, and not only the importance of the problem but the necessity of its solution.

The statistics given by the census officers seem to indicate that as a matter of economy the very best equipment can be used without increasing the tax upon individual passengers. If underground roads can be used without at first increasing such tax, and still offer a reasonable compensation for capital invested, the