ous unexplored sources in this city will involve a consideration of the general principles of taxation, and the true relations of labor and capital here, as well as the best plans and simplest modes of accomplishing it. In 1825 the opening of the Erie Canal marked a period of great advance in the growth and prosperity of the city. In 1878 the establishment of rapid transit through and within its limits will make a like epoch. The elevated railroads should receive a consideration preliminary to the practical examination of the questions above 'stated. They will be found to have a vital bearing on each. The routes laid down by the Rapid Transit Commissioners, under the law of 1875, were rudimentary. They overlooked or disregarded the conditions of the problem before them. It was not merely lines up and down town, with loops of connection at either end, but a system, that was needed. Terminal facilities, here as elsewhere, were as important as main lines. All external and internal centres and points of approach and departure should have been reached. In this respect there was a public opinion far in advance of them which they did not heed. The people did not want to travel on one line, but to reach without change their point of destination-a ferry, a steamboat - landing, or a depot; not one, but every one of them. The gap now between the Forty-second Street station of the New York Elevated Railway and the passenger entrances of the Grand Central Depot is as important to the traveler as the railroad itself. Close connection is imperative, but it was forgotten. They overlooked, too, the law under which the growth of a city is determined by its railroad lines and stations. The Western country shows instances of the growth of a town around a railroad-station as an initial point; all occupation and improvement is adapted to it as a centre. At the East there are many towns which have changed their growth to a new centre at the station which was planted in the suburbs. This city will obey this law. Its various occupations and improvements will conform to its internal lines of transportation. Much of this is settling on lines which it will be expensive to change, and such disturbances might have been avoided. The future uses of rapid transit are not limited to passenger- 30 traveling. Its adaptation to the uses which might have been provided for when the routes were laid out will be grafted on them at inconvenience and expense, and at fresh disturbance of the property interests, which adjust themselves to routes as they are opened. This disturbance has been a great obstacle to rapid transit through all its history. The unforeseen uses and necessities are manifold. Connection must be made with all the ferries and steamboat-landings at the lower end of the city. There was a great opportunity for forethought in providing a common southern terminus at the South Ferry, with a pier for general river departure. A river border-line, from Canal Street on the Hudson River to James Street on the East, and at those streets connecting with the main lines, would touch all the principal points in present use. Passengers should be landed and received from the elevated cars at the second story of the ferry and steamboat landings. The rest of the river border would soon demand the same conveniences. At the northern end of the island the various residence sections should be made accessible. In the new surveys of the Park Department these requirements were met in advance by laying out, in the district north of the Harlem River, a connecting series of distinct railroad avenues, which crossed the other streets and avenues at an under or over grade, and reached all sections. When the elevated roads reach the Harlem River, the ways for making the district north of it accessible are ready for them. Besides carrying passengers, these elevated roads must prepare to transport baggage, and do all the internal parcel-delivery of the city. By night they must do the business of moving freight from the freight-car to the vessel at the water-side; freight-depots and open spaces like the down-town squares must be provided for it. They must engage in the business of receiving market-supplies, such as every night gather at Fulton and Washington Markets, and delivering them to those or to new places of distribution. They must also be prepared to remove at night the accumulations of street-sweepings by day to fit places of final deposit. The people of this city are the only million in the country who have been denied the privilege of transportation by steam. They will enjoy what they have now, and ask for more. All this business will press upon the elevated railroad companies in time; new companies and forms of enterprise adapted to the business will be formed in connection with the roads. If these uses had been foreseen, the routes might have been laid out to meet all these future requirements; as it is, they will be reached with great loss of time, by force of popular pressure, not for the interests of the people, but wrested from the rivalry of the railroad corporations, and amid great conflict and disturbance of property interests. It is obvious that these railroads will grow to great power, great influence, and great profit. This profit should have been brought under a fair city taxation. It could have been done in advance, as a condition of the grant, on a just basis: it can be required now as the condition of inevitable future privileges. The city has a right to a portion of the profits, as a license fee or compensation for the grants by the city. This can be supported on sound principles of law and public policy. Through all the different cases of title to the bed of a street, in respect to the city and the adjacent owner, varying according to the origin of the street, it is generally true that all rights of ownership are in the city for the public use, and that the adjacent owner has none. The growth of a street shows that it is improved at the expense of the adjacent owners, for the public use, and that this extends to new and unforeseen uses. In a new settlement, the rudimentary street is a path between the first two houses for their occupants; new-comers assume the same rights, and the street is open to the public; at the demands of increased population and travel it is adapted to it, with sidewalks and paved carriageways; it is curbed, lighted, sewered, and repaved with better material; at the same demand rails are laid upon it for a new use the street-cars-and again, posts are erected upon it for the support of another unforeseen use the elevated steam railroad. The rights of the adjacent owners in a road-bed which has been improved in great part at their expense have passed to the city for the public use, and then for a mixed public and private use— railroads which serve the public and enrich their owners. Toward this use the city has contributed a graded right of way, on which the company have erected their road-structure. The company, by their issue of bonds and stocks, declare that their property is worth, per mile, several times more than the cost of the road-structure they have erected; that is, that their franchise, including what the city has contributed, is worth the difference between their actual cost of construction and the larger amount of bonds and stock which they have issued. This furnishes an indisputable ground and reason why the city should receive payment for its contribution, and why the company should pay, annually, a rent or compensation to the city for the use of the graded road-bed. These relations have grown up and been established by public policy and the decisions of the courts of last resort, and the obligation as certainly follows them. The beneficial results of rapid transit are scarcely anticipated. It will counteract the depletion of the taxable wealth and population belonging to this city into Brooklyn and New Jersey, which has been going on for more than fifteen years, because of low ferriage, good railroads with low commutation, and the prospect of the Brooklyn Bridge. It will gather the next accretions of property and population within the city limits, and under its taxation. It will equalize values through the length of the city; it will relieve taxation on real estate down-town by having the taxation up-town imposed, not on vacant lots, but on houses and lots; it will increase the advantages of the city as the location for all kinds of manufacturing business; it will expedite these effects. Opened at a time when vacant land up-town is at very low prices, it will stimulate the erection of a large number of low-cost dwellings to meet a demand, on the first revival of business, for single houses by the families now doubled up in houses in the lower, part of the city, the mere outburst of whom from such constraint will create a demand for such dwellings before there is any increase of population; it will create a new city abreast of the Park, with advantages and adaptations for health, elegance, and economy, to which the people are now strangers. All the business of the city will adjust itself to these new lines. To some the transition will be burdensome. No existing state of things at any date is a finality; the law is constant change and growth of the whole. The city has seen many such changes from residence to business through whole sections, and, after the temporary disturbance is over, values have been increased; on the railroad avenues this increase will be greatly augmented by the gathering of population along their upper borders, who will travel and trade upon the avenues. They will have the benefit of this law of high values, that the greatest value follows the greatest travel. Broadway, below Fourteenth Street, furnishes an illustration. The effort, in the earlier days of rapid transit, was to concentrate travel by surface and underground roads on Broadway. It was successfully resisted by the owners, who now see the high values, which gave it its character, transferred to its upper length, above Fourteenth Street, where there is a railroad, and distributed among the other avenues. The operation of this law, and there is no other, will ultimately give very high value to the Third and Sixth Avenues. The public attention is now engrossed by the minor annoyances, and their judgment has been affected by them; but minor advantages and disadvantages compensate and balance each other, and will cease to be heard of when the return of better times fixes these railroad avenues as the best business streets of the city. These companies are destined to possess high power and influence in the city, and they should have been harnessed in to do some of its work and sustain some of its burdens. It would come in the shape of annual rent and rent service. The payment of money can be best computed as a percentage on their gross receipts, to be paid periodically into the city treasury. There are not data enough at present to calculate the product of a percentage; but, if, on the receipts which have been publicly anticipated and reported, a just percentage were secured as an addition to the sinking-fund, it would go far toward liquidating the debt before its maturity, and it would, by the certainty of such a future provision, relieve at once the weight of the burden. By the misapplication of its funds the city has incurred a great debt, without any public work or improvement commensurate for it, and it would be a wise husbanding of its resources if, by another public work of great profit and utility, toward the construction of which the city had contributed the greater proportion, provision could be made, on just principles, for the final extinguishment of the debt. These elevated railroads will ultimately dominate the city; they ought now to be bound to its service. WILLIAM R. MARTIN. |