character as does not permit of it. For this class freight inland freight stations should be provided on Manhattan where the shipper and consignce may deliver or collect their freight with vehicles of their own selection.

These freight stations would be union stations, served by all the railroads of the port district and should be located at such points as will minimize the truck mileage between the shipper or consignee and the freight station. This function will make for economies for all concerned.

Exhibit "A" shows-tentative locations of suitable platforms for the transfer of freight between car and motor truck-existing ferry routes to be utilized-water routes to be utilized for the ferriage of motor trucks or containers by the railroads having no ferries available, and interior union freight stations located on the sites selected in the Bi-State Commission's report for the inland stations of the automatic electric system.

areas

Exhibit "A" also designates by numbers and alternately shaded, the trucking zones in lower Manhattan arrived at in the studies of the Bi-State Commission. One day's trucking to and from each railroad pier and freight station on Manhattan was observed. The location of each pick-up and delivery was spotted on the map and from this spotting twelve zones were outlined, each containing equal numbers of pick-ups and deliveries. The sites for the automatic electric terminals were based as far as possible on this zoning.

This system as outlined will reduce the present use of Manhattan's streets and waterfront for freight purposes; will reduce congestion and will reduce existing costs. But as the tonnage of Manhattan grows, the cost of operating under the system will grow the congestion of streets and waterfront will recur and a better system should supplant it. The automatic electric system offers a better and cheaper

method between Manhattan and the railroads. As its tonnage expands its operating cost lessens. Its tunnels are far below the city's streets and its terminals are inland from the congested waterfront.

It will bring containers from a point which does not congest the waterfront of New Jersey by a route which does not congest the waterfront of either New York or New Jersey to points which will minimize the congestion on Manhattan's streets and waterfront. Store door delivery can be made from its stations with no extra handlings. It will utilize the trucks, containers and Manhattan terminals which serve for present relief. There is therefore no waste in the plan for present relief which serves merely as an evolutionary step of the final plan.

The City of New York planned a dozen years ago to spend $70,000,000, more or less, to make a great subport out of Jamaica Bay, and recently it has gone about the business as if it intended to do something worth while, quickly.

The Port of New York just now is one of the dear ports of the world, considering the expense imposed upon ships which is ultimately borne by the consumers of what the ships carry, but its natural conformation, if but made the most of, could, and of course should, make it one of the very cheapest of great world ports.

When the people of the Port of New York provide for its needs as they should be provided for and present excessive expense of handling shipping here is reduced we shall no longer fear the diversion of our commerce and shipping to other ports.

Prizes to Students for Port Essays

The Educational Council of the Port of New York Authority in November of last year offered a series of prizes on the subject of Port Development to students in the fourth year of high schools and in the higher public institutions of learning in the Port of New York.

On January 8 the prizes will be awarded to the winning contestants. The prizes are scholarships donated by members of the Educational Council, civic associations and other interested groups of individuals, who have been engaged for the past few months in an educational campaign to bring before the people of the two States the relation of the development of the Port to the cost of living.

The general topics suggested were adapted to the various localities in the port district along the following lines: Freight delivery in Manhattan and its effect on the cost of living.

The relation of freight movements between Chicago and Queens to the cost of living in Queens.

The present disadvantage of New Jersey retail markets and a constructive plan for improvement.

How should the Newark water front be developed in order to lower the cost of living in Newark? The future of Jamaica Bay.

Local chambers of commerce in the 105 municipalities in the Port District co-operated in furthering information to the schools.

Prizes were offered as follows, in equal number for boys and girls: Ten in Greater New York; six in Hudson County, New Jersey; seven in Essex County, New Jersey; two in Bergen County, New Jersey; two in Middlesex County, New Jersey; two in Passaic County, New Jersey; two in Union County, New Jersey, and two in Westchester County, New York. One special prize is offered to a junior or senior student at Hunter College and another is offered to a senior student in the College of the City of New York.

Essays must be signed with a symbol, nom de plume or number, and the name and address of the contestant placed in a sealed envelope bearing the symbol used on the outside of the envelope.

New York's Freight Center

In its scheme for handling freight, the Port Authority proposes a railroad line to connect all railroads in New Jersey, with each individual line to separate its freight going into New York City by sending it to a distribution yard east of Croxton, the Erie yard in the Meadows. This will apply only for all freight going into New York City for consumption. It will be conveyed into New York by subway.

Freight bound for other cities in the Port District would not go to the distribution yard, but would be routed to them direct at a great saving of time.

All heavy freight for ships would be sent to the Jersey side of the river, and would not be brought across to New York. New steamship piers will be built on the New Jersey side and devoted largely to freight, while the big passenger ships will continue to dock in New York.

Such a system, it is believed, would involve a saving of from 40 cents to 50 cents a ton on the handling of freight across the Hudson.

The legislature of the State of New York this winter will doubtless find out why it is that it requires (?) between $30,000,000 and $40,000,000 a year to police the piers within the City of New York-a sum much greater than the city expends on its municipal police, almost as much as it spends on both its police and fire department forces.

TH

PROBLEMS MET AND DIFFICULTIES OVERCOME

But as

The layman of course has no conception of the problems faced and the difficulties overcome in the organization of a great engineering work and its reduction to so much digging, so much shield-driving, so much bolting together of iron rings and the placing of so much concrete. In all such undertakings the really difficult part is the planning, the determination of just what is to be accomplished and how it is to be done, the provision of financial support, the selection of materials, type size and standards for the work itself and the innumerable things that are to go to its completion. VENTILATION PROBLEM SOLVED

In the case of the vehicular tunnel that is to join Manhattan Island at Canal Street with Jersey City at the foot of Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets, there were all these things and more. For the first time in the history of engineering it became necessary, in order that absolute safety might be assured, to determine what degree of ventilation would have to be employed to eliminate the carbon monoxide gas which is one of the by-products of the combustion of gasoline vapor in an automotive internal combustion engine; to discover what quantity of this deadly gas might be expected to be thrown off in the tunnel by the 1,900 vehicles which will pass through those tubes every hour when used to capacity, and to find out by careful experimentation how much fresh air must be introduced into the tunnels to render these gases harmless, and how that introduction was to be accomplished by mechanical means that would not fail.

The year just ended saw this vastly important work, begun in the previous year, not only greatly enlarged in scope, but finally completed. It saw the problem solved to the fullest extent and a standard of such ventilation established that cannot fail to prove invaluable to future vehicular tunnel projects, of which there will be many. And it saw the associated problem of the relationship between the size of the tunnels and the ventilation equipment similarly solved, with the result that about a foot was added to the projected diameter of the big tubes to apply the results thus obtained. ALL DIFFERENCES OVERCOME AND HARMONY PREVAILS The year was fittingly closed, moreover, by the elimination of the vexing problems that had caused the two state commissions to disagree, through their substantial agreement on solutions that would meet not only their own views, but those of other parties having a legitimate interest in the solutions. So rapidly was agreement brought about when once a common ground had been provided that contracts for practically the entire project were arranged for at one time, advertising for bids authorized, a date set for opening these and a tentative date also for a fitting celebration of the event. Under these plans March will witness the starting, in all probability, of the assembling of the engineering plant for starting the shields that are to bore the tunnels through the silt that com

details that were holding up or likely in future to delay the construction work, once started.

The Attorney General of the State of New Jersey ruled that the proceeds of the $28,000,000 tunnel bond issue were not available until July 1, 1921.

WHAT THE TUNNEL MEANS TO EACH OF US

We dwellers in the Port of New York District have not yet begun to realize what the vehicular tunnel is going to mean to us. It is going to mean for the motor truck and the motor delivery car quite as real emancipation from the delays of the ferries, the excessive costs, the barrier of the river, as the proclamation of Lincoln meant for the negro slave. It

an integral feature of the general solution of the problems of the Port of New York, which in the main are problems posed by the barriers which nature has set against transportation within the Port. It means not only greater convenience, better business, quicker communication, but money in pocket-for all of us, as well as immense advantages for all who trade with, visit and do business with us, from beyond our municipal and state lines.

It cannot come too quickly. But perhaps those of us who realize its advantages in advance, and are therefore doubly anxious for its completion, are a bit unduly impatient whenever any suggestion of delay is apparent in its councils. The more haste the less speed; and those who most realize the need of the tunnel will be best able to concede that the deliberations and resulting solutions and safeguards of the year just past may mean quicker construction, fewer mistakes, and a more effective and satisfying result, when the tunnel becomes a reality, than if the Jersey shaft contract had been awarded last July, in inadequate study of some of the contributory problems, and those problems, belatedly discovered, had not been already met and disposed of.

The tunnel job is in the hands of men who have experience in varied business lines, who have become almost lay engineers themselves in their association over many years with tunnel problems and tunnel engineers. The average man may grow impatient as his truck or his motor car waits interminably for the ferry. But he has the assurance that the tunnel will be built and ready now within a comparatively short time, that the work is in good hands, and that it will be the right kind of tunnel when those hands get through with it.

The legislature of the State of New York this winter will probably fix the rates of wharfage at the Port of New York in such a way that the city will receive what the shipowners pay for wharfage, besides which the average rates will be greatly reduced.

The Port of New York owes a great debt of gratitude to the outports whose rivalry at last aroused the people of this port to take care of its maritime, commercial and industrial needs adequately.

E

LEVEN years ago, when the Queensboro Chamber of Commerce was organized, very little was heard of the advantages which that Borough had in its great waterfront on the East River, Newton Creek, Flushing Bay, Jamaica Bay and Atlantic Ocean, just as small attention had previously been given to the enormous area of the Borough and its possibilities for housing the congested population of the more highly developed boroughs of the city.

Few people realize that of the total natural shore line in the Port of New York-771 miles-including the five Boroughs of New York City and the Jersey waterfront, that 196.8 miles, or 25 per cent, is in Queens Borough. Today the improvements of this waterfront in Queens amount to nearly forty miles, measured around piers and along the heads of slips, as compared with 103 miles of improvements in Brooklyn and 77 miles in Manhattan.

The Queensboro Chamber of Commerce, immediately after its formation, began an active campaign to secure recognition of the needs of the Borough, and as a result new bridges, tunnels and rapid transit lines have been built, bringing with them hundreds of new industries and thousands of new homes of every description. The total cost of all these improvements during the past ten years has exceeded a quarter of a billion dollars.

In 1913, Congress included in the Rivers and Harbors Bill, at the request of the Queensboro Chamber of Commerce, an appropriation of $255,000 for deepening the channel in Flushing Bay and Creek. This was the first appropriation since 1879, which had been made for the improvement of the navigation of vessels in this important water

way.

In 1914 the State of New York acquired on the waterfront of Queens, property for three barge canal terminals, as a result of the efforts of the Queensboro Chamber of Commerce. This property, which included a total frontage of a quarter of a mile and approximately ten acres of land, with the improvements which have been made thereon, represents today an investment of nearly $2,000,000.

In 1919 the Federal Government appropriated $510,000 for the deepening and widening of the channel in Newtown Creek, known as "The Busiest Waterway of Its Size in the World." This stream, which is the boundary line between the Boroughs of Queens and Brocklyn for a distance of four miles, has on its borders in Queens some of the largest industries in New York City. This appropriation was secured largely through the efforts of the Queensboro Chamber of Commerce.

The improvement of Jamaica Bay, that vast land-locked harbor, the larger proportion of the shore line of which is in Queens Borough, has advanced slowly but surely during the past ten years. During the past year, work was actually started by the City of New York on the construction of several large piers. The comprehensive plan for the develop ments of this waterfront includes a wide channel skirting the entire bay with several basins extending into the Queens Borough shore. The completion of this vast improvement, which will cost many millions of dollars, and which has always had the backing of the Queensboro Chamber of Commerce, will open for industrial, commercial and residential

development an area in the southern section of Queens equal to that of the entire Borough of Richmond.

Murray Hulbert, who has been Commissioner of Docks of New York City for the past four years, has, during the year of 1921, prepared plans for two important improvements on the waterfront of Queens Borough. The first of these being the improvement of the shore front along Flushing Bay, and the second being the construction of a freight terminal on the East River at the foot of Nott Avenue, Long Island City.

In the first improvement of the shore front of Flushing Bay, for which he has secured the approval of the Sinking Fund Commission, the plans comprehend not only a new 30-foot deep channel along the westerly shore of the bay, but the construction of twenty-four piers ranging from 1,200 to 1,300 feet in length and from 200 to 300 feet in width: with railhead connections capable of furnishing dockage facilities for ocean going vessels.

The first step in this development, the soundings for which are now being made, is the laying out of a quay wharfage proposition which can be merged into pier wharfage as the shipping business at this locality grows. It is proposed to build at once a quay wall 8,400 feet long with a platform 30 feet wide extending from Bowery Bay to Flushing Bay, and on this platform to place two lines of railroad tracks and traveling, revolving cranes in sufficient number to take care of the wharfage. In the rear of the platform there will be built temporary or permanent warehouses 70 feet wide in and out shore, and in lengths of 300 feet each. In the rear of these warehouses a trucking roadway 60 feet wide will be built.

In the Fall of 1921 Dock Commissioner Hulbert had prepared by his Department plans for a freight terminal on the East River shore line, Long Island City, at the foot of Nott Avenue. These have recently been submitted to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which will shortly hold a public hearing thereon. The equipment of this terminal will consist of a crib bulkhead to retain the filling for the railroad yard; a slip will be provided for a car float, and a transfer bridge with pontoon and operating machinery; a fenced area, with gates, enclosing railroad tracks with proper crossovers, turnouts, switches, bumpers, etc.; a freight house within the fenced area with transfer platforms and furnished with the necessary freight handling devices; pavements outside of and between the railroad tracks.

The immediate construction of this freight terminal will to a large extent do away with the necessity of the shippers of Queens Borough trucking their shipments to and from the piers and freight terminals in Manhattan, and therefore result in a large saving of such trucking expenses.

The Port of New York authority, in its report to the Legislature, which has just been published, announces that the essential part of its entire comprehensive plan is the construction of a freight tunnel under the Upper Bay, which will be used for the direct interchange of freight between the trunk line railroads which now terminate in New Jersey, and the railroads in Queens and Brooklyn. Their plan also provides for a marginal railroad extending the entire dis(Continued on page 19)