One of the chief tasks before the engineers of the Port of New York Authority is to bring down this cost. They have proposed a fascinating and elaborate plan by which the freight-cars upon the eight railroads coming into New York from the south and west be unloaded well outside the rail terminal congestion--the essence of the fully-developed Cincinnati plan which we have just seen. Their freight would go into a form of container which would ride into Manhattan upon a miniature underground electric railroad, not dissimilar to that in successful use in Chicago for a number of years past. This road, connecting with the outlying freight interchange points, would dip under the Hudson River at the Battery and continue up under West Street, at the extreme westerly rim of Manhattan Island, to about Thirty-third Street, where it would again tunnel beneath the river and return to New Jersey--a simple and efficient belt-line. This scheme is most interesting, despite its weakness in ignoring the uptown growth of Manhattan Island by quitting it south of Thirty-fourth Street. Unfortunately it is most expensive, as well. Most such plans are. Its estimated cost is $259,000,000. A keen and experienced railroader of my acquaintance, taking this into consideration for his overhead and making a sharp analysis of probable operating costs, has not hesitated to give it as his opinion that this underground electric railroad would impose a terminal cost of something over four dollars a ton for classified freight entering Manhattan from the west bank of the Hudson River. Add to this your street haul costs of from eight to ten cents a hundred and you begin to get something too dangerously close to six dollars a ton to have much joy in it for the New York merchants. One of the most important of the eight railroads entering New York from the west, from a freight traffic point of view, at least, is the Erie. Despite a fearful heritage of financial obligations incurred during its maladministration of half a century ago, it is a remarkably progressive property in its operating methods. Poverty and the consequent need for extreme economy have forced it into many ingenious and highly practical operating kinks. The vast expenditures involved in the elaborate plan of the Port of New York Authority can have little fascination for the energetic F. D. Underwood and the rest of the Erie officers, who know how very hard it is for them to meet their operating and their fixed charges--dividends are not in their hopes. With this in mind they have sought to meet the New York terminal situation, not with large expenditures but with an adaptation of the tolls close at hand. Already they have entered into a contract with a trucking concern upon Manhattan Island to work out the details of a most ingenious plan which goes after this fashion.