To the terminals of the Erie and the Lackawanna railroads, which are
situated upon the west bank of the Hudson River directly across from the
lower portions of Manhattan Island, the Hudson and Manhattan tubes, built
by the vision and daring of one William G. McAdoo, whom already we have
encountered in these pages, give access. The tubes also reach the old
passenger-station of the Pennsylvania in Jersey City, which is still used
to a moderate extent, and continue west to the main line of the
Pennsylvania at Manhattan Transfer and into the heart of Newark, eight
miles distant. Already they are overcrowded, particularly in rush hours;
and it does not take a very great deal of vision to perceive that
eventually they will have to be extended at least two miles as a subway
under Broad Street, Newark, from the present rather unsatisfactory
terminal at the Military Park, in that city.
The facilities are not good for reaching the trains of the Erie and the
Lackawanna from those of the tubes; particularly is this true in the case
of the ancient Erie terminal, where there is a long and, at times,
overcrowded passageway to be traversed afoot between the platforms of the
two railroads. In the concluding chapters of this book I am to indicate
the regrouping of the railroads that eventually must come about, in one
form or another. I may anticipate by saying that in almost any regrouping
the financially strong Lackawanna will be linked to the financially weak
Erie. Therefore I may be permitted to assume that the lines of these two
systems, with an elaborate network of suburban branches in northeastern
New Jersey, may yet be joined together somewhere just west of the Bergen
tunnels in Hoboken where they now cross at an acute angle. This being
done, the rest is easy. One set of tunnels would be assigned for
east-bound movement, the other for west-bound; which arrangement gives
four tracks in _each_ direction--enough for a really vast passenger
traffic movement. Somewhere close to their eastern portals these tunnels
would be depressed and continued under the Hudson River to Manhattan
Island. Here they would be far apart, perhaps as much as a mile apart.
Between them and running north and south upon Manhattan would be a
connecting tunnel link ten or twelve or fourteen tracks in width and with
long continuous platforms between these tracks. It is easy to surmise that
two or three trains could easily lie back of one another at any one of
these tenuous underground platforms in the Manhattan terminal. This great
sub-service passenger-station would lie somewhere just west of the Seventh
Avenue extension and barely north of Canal Street, in Manhattan. It is a
district that has not gone ahead with the rest of New York. A huge
passenger terminal within it would be of tremendous help in raising its
depressed realty values, while the proximity of the station to the main
trunk of the West Side subway of the Interborough and the extended Canal
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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