We have said that, owing to the small size of its business centre, the city of Boston is probably suffering more from congestion of traffic than any other American city. The method of rapid transit which we have just described is admirably adapted to give it relief. Through the broad suburban streets the electric cars now move at the rate of eight to ten miles an hour. The congestion of traffic extends for less than one mile, and is chiefly confined to two parallel streets, Washington and Tremont, through which the great tide of travel running north and south, and representing a population of 850,000 souls, passes all day long. The great shopping districts are about in the middle of this mile. The West End Railway Co. finding that their cars take longer to pass over this mile than over three or four miles in the suburban districts, have asked the Rapid Transit Commission to recommend to the Legislature to allow them to construct a short subway running under the Common and a part of Tremont Street, and coming out at Adams Square. The nature of the ground admits of such a subway being connected with elevated lines at each end when desired. The subway would be similar to the short subway in New York under Fourth Avenue, between Thirty-fourth and Forty-Second Streets. It would be lighted at short intervals by openings in the roof, and would be unobjectionable in every respect. Near Park Street Church, where the great crowding shown in the illustration to the article in the May number now takes place, there would be a central underground station, where passengers could take trains to and from all parts of the city and suburbs. This seems to be a simple and reasonable way of relieving the difficulty, for the cars on the new subway would make so much better time than those on the surface of the streets, that the larger part of these would be withdrawn from the streets and take this route. The plan is one that can be quickly carried out, and at a comparatively small cost. The Commission, it is understood, will recommend this, but they go a great deal farther. They follow in the footsteps of Berlin, Paris, and London, and propose a circular or ring railway connecting all the steam railroad stations. Part of the line will be elevated, and it will descend under the Common and Tremont Street as the West End line proposes to do. This ring line will have no rail connection with either the steam railroads, or the street railways. Passengers are expected to change cars, ascend and ride around this circle.
The experience of the European cities, to which I have referred in my former article, has shown that these ring railways, in consequence of their not following the lines of the principal thoroughfares where people want to go, and of trying to induce people to take a circuitous route where they do not wish to go, have been utter failures, and are now being supplemented by lines running across the circumscribed area in all directions, but always on the lines of main streets. It does not appear as if this Boston ring scheme would attract capital, as it would cost ten times as much as the other less pretentious plan, and people would not ride on it even free of charge, for they would have to pay another fare as soon as they left it, and no time would be saved. We have criticized this plan not in a hostile spirit, but present it as an object-lesson of what should be avoided. Of all difficult tasks, there is none more difficult than to make an American take the longest way around, when he can "cut across."
