Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/49

 THE GREEN BAG proval of some other tribunal, may be more conveniently examined under the two heads of that affecting construction, and that af fecting operation, of street railways. The two processes, however, have been, in fact, contemporaneous. By a special statute in 1887, authorizing the consolidation of all companies running cars into the city of Boston,1 the legislature provided that no location, and no altera tion or revocation of a location, of the tracks of a street railway company in Bos ton, Cambridge or Brookline, should be valid until approved by the Board of Rail road Commissioners. In 1888, it was pro vided that no company should run its cars over, or use the tracks of, another company, unless the authority to do so had been ap proved by the Board of Railroad Commis sioners. In 1895 followed the enactment that no street railway track should be con structed at grade across a steam railroad track without the consent of the Board of Railroad Commissioners, or, at the election of the company wishing to construct the railway, of a special commission to be ap pointed by the Superior Court on petition of the company. In 1897, the grant by local authorities of the right to lay tracks in state highways, which in recent years have been greatly extended and now in clude 448 miles of important highway, was rendered useless without the approval of the Massachusetts Highway Commission. In the same year, a special committee was appointed by the governor to consider the relation between street railway com panies and the municipalities within the limits of which the railways were operated. Based upon the report of this committee, the legislature of 1898 passed an act * ma terially amending the provisions of existing law. The most important change, affecting the location of street railways, extended to 1 These companies owned about one half of the 470 miles of street railway track then operated in Massachusetts. 1 Acts, 1898, chapter 378.

the whole State that feature of the special law already in force in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, that no revocation of a street railway location should be valid with out the approval of the Board of Railroad Commissioners. Although this general act of 1898 did not require such approval to the grant of a location by aldermen or se lectmen in every case, it provided that a location in any street should not be valid unless so approved, if ten in number, or a majority in value, of the owners of real estate abutting on the street, filed with the railroad commissioners a protest against the proposed location. The act also au thorized the commission to grant an original location in a city, or town, without regard to the. action of the aldermen or selectmen, when the location seemed to the commis sion necessary to connect existing locations in neighboring places. About ten years ago, the legislature es tablished a Metropolitan Park Commission, with authority to lay out and establish an extensive system of parks and connecting parkways or boulevards for the metropoli tan district embracing Boston and a large number of the flourishing cities and towns within a radius of about ten miles. The Attorney-General having decided that the local boards of aldermen and selectmen could not grant street railway locations in these parks, or in the parkways leading to or connecting them, the legislature gave to the Metropolitan Park Commission exclusive authority to grant such locations. In 1901, after a decision of the Supreme Court that street railways, with the consent of only the local authorities, might be con structed and operated upon private land outside the limits of public ways, the legis lature at once prohibited such construction or operation without the approval of the railroad commissioners, and gave to them exclusive jurisdiction as to the details of the construction and operation. Two years later, when the legislature authorized street railway companies to acquire land by emi