National Affairs: Island Tubes

Manhattan Island’s flinty length is skewered by two sets of tubes, its flat back mounted by three great overhead structures. The tubes all duck under the East River, bore deep into Brooklyn. One is run by Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corp. The other, a two-pronged affair stretching to The Bronx, is controlled by Interborough Rapid Transit Co. which also operates the elevated lines. New York City owns the tunnels and tracks, rents them under long-term leases to the operating companies.

Still another subway, parallel to and west of the present units, is being built by the municipal government. Its completion will bring the total trackage of the three systems up to 688 mi., the largest city transportation network in the world. Without its vast, rumbling traction arteries which sell 4,210,000 rides a day, New York would be paralyzed. Hence few New Yorkers were not interested, last week, in a plan proposed by Special Counsel Samuel Untermyer of the Transit Commission for the city to buy back, for $489,804,000, operating control of all overhead and underground transportation lines and unify them in one great muncipal system. In effect the city would be purchasing back its transit leases before maturity.

The Plan is Counsel Untermyer’s third since 1927. Two previous programs were pigeonholed by the Republican State Legislature for fear patronage of the municipal lines would fall into Tammany’s hands, for fear an inflexible 5¢ fare would not be guaranteed. The new plan seeks to provide a means by which the city can finance a gigantic transit program “to abate the present intolerable conditions of service.”

The Terms of the purchase were generally conceded to be generous. As fixed by Mr. Untermyer, the price for B. M. T. was $193,471,000; price of I. R. T., $276,504,000. Most liberal seemed his evaluation of the companies’ stocks: $80 for B. M. T. (now selling around $60), $50 for I. R. T. (now fluctuating between $25 and $30). Explanation for these prices was that they are undervalued, “prevailing at the bottom of a bear market.”

Benefits cited for the community were many. Under the Untermyer plan additional legislation was recommended so that the city’s present investment of $386,000,000 in subway construction will not be considered as part of the municipal debt which is limited by law. The unified system would become self-supporting instead of imposing its present annual tax burden of $13,500,000 on the citizenry. But most tangible factor of all is that the subway-farer would be assured forever of his nickel ride, a prime political issue in New York which re-elected Mayor Hylan in 1921, Mayor Walker in 1929.

The Man with whom Counsel .Untermyer did most of his dickering is tall, big-toothed Gerhard Melvin Dahl, onetime (1910-12) commissioner of street railways in Cleveland. Although New York’s two systems are figuratively autonomous, Mr. Dahl is board chairman of both because of B. M. T.’s large I. R. T. holdings. Because he is the biggest figure in New York’s transit business and because he played so prominent a part in the Untermyer negotiations, observers believed that, instead of losing his job if and when the unification plan becomes an actuality, he may sell his lines to the city only to be appointed operating chief of the public corporation proposed to run the whole system.

Rich, white-haired, bony-faced Mr. Dahl, 54, was graduated from the University of Wisconsin law school, was once a La Follette supporter. He says he has had much more fun since becoming a transit man than he ever had as a barrister. He likes to play backgammon for large stakes. He spends most of his time on his Long Island estate where he has many dogs.

More Tubes. Approval was granted last week by the War Department for the construction of a $50,000,000 vehicular tunnel under the East River between Manhattan and Queens to match the Holland tunnel under the Hudson. This project is hanging fire because of two projected tunnels with which it may connect: one across the island, another under the Hudson to Weehawken, N. J.