TUNNEL HOLED THROUGH The headings of the south tube of the Whitehall-Montague Street tunnels underneath the East river were holed through on June 20, 1917, the blast being set off by Chairman Oscar S. Straus. The occasion was made one of special ceremonies inasmuch as the conjunction of the headings underneath the river marked the completion of the most difficult of the tasks in connection with tunnel construction. Members and officials of the Commission participated with the Flinn-O'Rourke Company and its engineers and workmen. This company had the contracts for building both the Whitehall-Montague Street and the Old SlipClark Street tunnels, the former a part of the operating system of the B. R. T. lines and the latter of the Interborough lines. The under-river headings of the Old Slip-Clark Street lines were united late in 1916, while the headings of the north tunnel of the Whitehall-Montague Street lines were joined earlier in the present year. The last blast for the south tunnel was exploded by means of an electric apparatus arranged on a platform erected near the entrance to the working shaft on the shore of the East river at the foot of Montague and Furman streets, Brooklyn. Above the platform hung a sign indicating the favorable progress made on the two downtown tunnels as compared with the progress record on other tunnel work under the East river. The party included besides Chairman Straus, Commissioners Henry W. Hodge, Travis H. Whitney and Charles S. Hervey; Secretary James B. Walker; Chief Engineer Daniel L. Turner; Robert Ridgway, Engineer of Subway Construction; Clifford M. Holland, Tunnel Engineer, and others, representing the Commission, and George H. Flinn, President; Major J. F. O'Rourke, Vicepresident and Chief Engineer, and others, representing the construction company. In the course of the exercises it was stated by some of the speakers that the progress on the Whitehall– Montague Street tunnel was double that made on any other East River tunnel work, a record of 95.4 feet of advance in a consecutive six-day period having been made in one of the tubes. It was also pointed out, as notable in under-river tunnel con struction, that no fatality had occurred from the once dreaded compressed air illness commonly called "bends" during the work of constructing this tunnel and only one death due to this disease on the adjacent Old Slip-Clark Street tunnel construction work. The result was the more remarkable inasmuch as it had been achieved under a high air pressure and in the face of a grand total of 800,000 decompressions, which is the technical description of the process of bringing engineers, laborers and other tunnel employes out of the compressed air of the tunnel area. The Old Slip-Clark Street and the Whitehall-Montague Street tunnels have two tubes each, to provide the first rapid transit express service connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn. In the aggregate the four tunnels with their land approaches are over six miles long and include five miles of shield tunnel work. They will cost The City of New York approximately $17,000,000 and, taken in connection with the construction of other underriver tunnels necessitated by the Dual System work, will represent a total outlay aggregating between $25,000,000 and $30,000,000 the greatest subaqueous tunnel project in the history of the world. The land approaches to these tunnels were constructed with such great care that practically no disturbance was noted in the buildings abutting upon the lines of the tunnel routes. At the time of the celebration, but eight feet of rock, almost exactly in the middle of the river and scine ninety feet beneath its surface, remained to be cut away; dynamite had been inserted in drill holes in this rock and electric wires laid out through the air locks of the tunnel portal and up through the shaft to the platform where the blasting apparatus was attached. As Chairman Straus pressed down the electric switch, making the connection which "fired" this blast, the sound of the explosion was clearly heard over a telephone a few feet away from the stand, and which connected with the tunnel underneath the river. Word came back a few minutes later that the blast had been entirely successful, that a clean connection between the east and west headings had been made and that the computations of the engineers had been shown to be exact within the fraction of an inch. Since the date of the celebration, work has steadily gone forward in all four tubes of these two tunnels with the expectation that they will be ready for service during 1918 or early in 1919. TRANSIT PROBLEM OF CENTRAL BROOKLYN The solution of the transit problem of central Brooklyn continued to be foremost among rapid transit matters to which the Commission gave its attention during the year. Very important progress was made. Proposals which looked to the betterment of present conditions date back to the controversy arising out of the dissatisfaction with the provision made in the Dual Subway contracts for central Brooklyn. The matter was progressed during 1917 to the extent that a definite program based upon plans and contracts was presented to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment for consideration, in which there were recommended numerous changes and amendments to Dual System Contract No. 4, affecting the New York Municipal Railway Corporation in Brooklyn. The situation as it existed at the beginning of 1915 and at the beginning of 1916 was outlined in the Annual Reports of those two years. Early in December, 1916, the Commission held a hearing at which the proponents and opponents of the Fulton Street third-tracking plan and of other plans proposed were given full opportunity of expressing their views. Somewhat later, business men of the lower Fulton Street section, together with representatives of Brooklyn real estate interests, petitioned the Commission to direct that the third-tracking be proceeded with forthwith. Still later, communications were exchanged between the Chief of Rapid Transit of the Commission and the President of the New York Municipal Railway Corporation, in which views of the Commission as to the method of treatment of the problem and the company's position in respect to the several suggestions were, respectively, set forth. The letter of Colonel Williams, which was received on December 28, was of such a nature that on January 4, 1917, the Commission authorized Chairman Oscar S. Straus to communicate with Colonel Williams in response to the latter's letter. The reply of the Chairman was as follows: January 4, 1917. Col. T. S. WILLIAMS, President, The Commission has your letter of December 28, 1916, addressed to its Chief of Rapid Transit, relative to the Fulton Street situation, sent in answer to a draft letter embodying suggestions to relieve the present difficulty, sent to you on December 21, 1916, by the Chief of Rapid Transit with a view toward reaching informally an amicable settlement of the various questions at issue, and then announcing the conclusions in the form of an understanding thereon between the Commission and the company. In order that the position of the Commission may be understood it takes this opportunity of confirming the draft letter sent to you by the Chief of Rapid Transit and ratifying what is therein stated. On the question of the physical improvements suggested in the draft communication there seems to be substantial agreement. The difference between the policy of the Commission and of your company as indicated in these letters lies mainly in the inclusion of conditions and of extraneous matters that your company seems to feel that it is in a position to impose and exact for meeting the necessities of the Brooklyn situation. Disregarding for the moment these conditions and your insistence that the demands of the company be met in toto or that no one of Commission's proposals will be consented to, the difference between the Commission's suggestions and the demands of your company may roughly be grouped as follows: Commission Letter (Dec. 21) Company Letter (Dec. 28) 1. Completion of third-track- Similar. (See discussion ing to a point near later). Cumberland street. |