RAILWAYS: Loree Defeated

“The application should be denied, but without prejudice to resubmission with additional support and upon a record that will give broader consideration to the public interest.”

So saying, a board of its experts laid a report before the Interstate Commerce Commission.

L. F. Loree, President of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, recently laid a proposal before the Commission for the construction of a line, 283 miles long, from Allegheny City to Easton, Pa., at a cost of some 205 millions. The purpose of the proposal was to create a new trunk line route that would shorten the distance between New York City and Pittsburgh by 75 or 80 miles.

Mr. Loree’s proposal was made as long ago as 1905. It was indorsed by the late E. H. Harriman in 1908, shortly before his death. When Mr. Loree resurrected the plan last year, American railroad men wondered whether he did it in all seriousness, or merely to bedevil the “Big Four” which had more or less ignored him. Mr. Loree was apparently quite in earnest, however, and applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission for permission to build the new line.

The building of this line was opposed by a number of other carriers with which the proposed route would compete—the New York Central, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore & Ohio railroads, in particular.

The Interstate Commerce Commission referred the application for report to a group of experts. The experts found themselves agreeing largely with the objecting lines: That although the route would be shorter the present through routes handle the traffic adequately; that most of the traffic of the new route would be secured at the expense of existing routes, thereby reducing their revenues; that except for a slight time-saving to the public on through shipments, the proposed route was likely to produce little except new financial difficulties in railroad finance.

Hence they recommended that the Commission turn its thumbs down on Mr. Loree’s proposal. The Commission has yet to act.