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need not concern itself with the activities of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.

In the second paragraph of the proposed ordinance, as quoted, it is noted again that the pilot must have a special permit from the head of the Police Department permitting flight. This places the Police Department ahead of the National Government, and if such actions were followed, it would be fatal to the proper development of aerial navigation. We now have federal inspection of steamboats, which are interstate in operation. We must have federal inspection of aircraft to determine their airworthiness, because in aircraft we are dealing not only with interstate carriers, but carriers in international trade, as was illustrated by the successful flights across the ocean and by the recent reliability contests between New York and Toronto, and between New York and San Francisco.

The third paragraph of the proposed ordinance, that covering registration, merits the same criticism that registration is a federal function and not one that can be undertaken by any police department.

As to the final paragraph of the ordinance, just as soon as a city or state begins to make regulations regarding the height at which airplanes may travel over the city, just at that moment shall we see deplorable interference with the aerial traffic of tomorrow. This does not mean that regulations should not be imposed, but the duty belongs primarily to the Federal Government.

The Federal Government must establish flying routes. It must establish lanes of travel for various types of craft. The army regulations already prohibit inverted or exhibition flying over crowded parts of cities, and "stunt" flying is prohibited below a height of 3,000 feet. "Stunting" is not necessary in ordinary flying and is of practical benefit to pilot and passengers only in case something goes wrong with the plane, and then the pilot's knowledge of trick flying may serve to prevent a crash If " stunt" flying is to be prohibited by law, would it not be more practical to follow the principle of federal prohibition, that is, permit the Government to make one law? The proposed ordinance contains a provision against carrying in aircraft any material that can be exploded by concussion, or any

highly inflammable material not in gas-tight cases. As applied to municipalities, this provision is unnecessary, for it would naturally form part of any basic law adopted by the Federal Government. With regard to "rules of the air and alighting," it should be emphasized further that these rules must be adopted by the National Government to be in harmony with international rules. Take the "fine and imprisonment for violation" of a city ordinance. Shall we have aeronautical travel in the future placed at the mercy of a police magistrate? What motorist does not know that police judges sometimes possess anything but the broadest possible views? How much worse would this be in the case of the air? In providing municipal legislation, the proposed ordinance lays down the wrong principle at the start. We should bear in mind that federal authority is supreme, and that if it is at all necessary, state or local legislation should be only supplementary. It is admitted that Congress should enact at once laws regulating aerial navigation. Federal Inspection a Logical Prerequisite

to Certificate of Airworthiness The day is also at hand when manufacturers of aircraft, whether airplanes, hydroairplanes, flying boats, or balloons will look to the Federal Government for advice and counsel regarding materials used in construction. The day will soon come when the Federal Government will have to adopt a system of aircraft inspection comparable, possibly, to the practices now followed in dealing with water craft. Knowing the standard dependability of materials and the inherent strength of a flying machine, by rigid sand loading tests—such as were imposed during the war-the Federal Government in addition should require satisfactory flying proof before issuing a certificate of airworthiness.

Behind the issuance of such certificates lies coördination, which is vital to safe aerial navigation. Army and navy authorities should coöperate with officials having to do with civilian flying, so that maximum results can be achieved.

Having established the airworthiness of an airship or an airplane, the next step would be to license pilots and mechanics. The Joint Army and Navy Board of Aerial Cognizance, which at present is the recognized authority

in issuing civilian licenses, has found that army and navy tests of fitness may be applicable also to peace-time flying, and it is possible that these standards may form an acceptable basis for future licensing. Remembering always that aerial navigation is not only interstate but international, it must be conceded that the issuance of licenses must continue to be a national responsibility.

Local Legislation Would Lead to Confusion What about prohibited areas? The military and naval authorities have always' shown commendable wisdom in limiting flights of a certain character over cities or other congested areas. Here is opportunity for a federal code which shall include military works and regions to traverse which will impose danger upon pilot, passenger or spectator. But to permit localities, each with a different conception of what is proper, to take the initiative, is simply to follow the lamentable procedure of haphazard legislation applied in the case of the railway and the automobile.

Aerial transport certainly has as strong a claim on national interest as the movement of passengers and freight by rail, road or water. It is a function of the Federal Government not of the War or Navy or Post Office Departments alone - to map aerial highways. If these are outlined independently by communities or even by commonwealths, they will not join up state by state and manifestly cannot enter as a consecutive link into international air routes. To prepare an aerial highway is to do more than designate a straight line route between two given points: it is to map or photograph every foot of ground, to measure heights, to construct landmarks visible by day and night and to provide accurate information covering meteorological conditions at various levels.

Terminals Require Standardization Perhaps the strongest argument for federal initiative is found in the matter of aerial terminals. Standards should be provided, and municipalities should have the advantage of all the technical engineering advice at the com

mand of the National Government, so that airdromes, as established by the various cities, will be uniform in specification and will be included in the proper class. Much pioneer labor along this line has already been performed by the directors of our army and navy air services who have recognized the principle of uniformity. It is not within the province of the National Government to do for municipalities what they themselves should do, but cooperation and mutual encouragement are highly desirable.

For a municipality or a state to prohibit flight or even to attempt to establish flight levels will be to confuse the responsibility which rightly belongs to the National Government. International practice must determine many national rules. Under proper supervision it is possible to permit flights which, if judged locally, would be absolutely barred.

National judgment, not community prejudice, should be the formulating guide for rules of operation in the air; for placing signals on aircraft and airdromes and for their proper display. The use of airplanes in interstate commerce is limited as yet, but it is not difficult to foresee dangerous complications if states undertake to prescribe rights of way, turns and precedence so that a pilot in flying from New York to San Francisco would not only be in frequent disobedience of local statutes but would actually be placed in peril because of the persistent confusion.

It is better to get started right than to attempt to correct unfortunate legislation. This view has been accepted in many states and is endorsed by the various flying clubs. Several score municipalities represented at the Southeastern Aeronautical Congress, which was held in Macon, Ga., last May, adopted resolutions calling on Congress to take the initiative in regulating aerial navigation, and recommending that the various states accept this fact, lend their support and, if necessary, enact concurrent legislation to the end that aeronautics shall have the benefit of a united policy.

Unique Lighting System for Saratoga

SINGLE-LIGHT, DUO-FLUX STANDARD FOR UPPER

BROADWAY,

Springs

By A. F. Dickerson

Along with other projects recently devised in Saratoga Springs, N. Y., to stimulate popular interest in this worldfamous watering resort, the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce has advocated and successfully carried thru a movement to establish a modern system of lighting on Broadway, the main thorofare of the city, and thru Congress Park. W. D'A Ryan, Director of the illuminating Engineering Laboratory of the General Electric Company, was requested to design a lighting system for the city, and he decided to equip Broadway with the initial installation of the new Duo-Flux lighting unit.

[graphic]

This is the result of engineering investigations of several years' extent. It is a lighting fixture which combines beauty in design with a distinctive utilitarian feature. There are two lamps of unequal candle-power in each globe, and by the means of a relay cut-out, operated by short-circuiting the transformer at the station, the larger lamp is extinguished at midnight and the smaller one is lighted. This arrangement will permit the use of reduced illumination after midnight without a duplication of lighting circuits. The Broadway standard is colonial in design and has two Duo-Flux units, each equipped with a 1,000

candle-power and a 250-candle-power lamp. Therefore there will be 2,000 candle-power from each standard up to midnight, and 500 candle-power thereafter. The standards are located opposite each other and have spacings of approximately 135 feet. The height of the center of the light source is 20 feet. Approximately one mile of street will be lighted by 69 standards.

This installation will be financed by the Adirondack Electric Power Corporation at a cost of approximately $32,000. The city has entered into a ten-year contract with the electric company for this lighting, at a yearly rate of $10,350.

Congress Spring Park will also be lighted under the terms of the contract, at an annual cost of $2,650. Fifty-three standards with fixtures similar in design to the Duo-Flux, but smaller, will be installed. Each globe will have a 250-candle power series Mazda lamp. The installation cost will be over $10,000.

North Broadway, a
residential extension

of Broadway, will be
lighted for a mile
with the Broadway
type of standard, ex-
cepting that one fix-
ture will be used on
each instead of two.
Each globe will have
a 600-candle-power
series Mazda lamp.

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Subsurface Terminals for Street Cars Open

to Criticism

By John P. Fox

Consultant on Traffic Problems

A report like the one recently issued on rapid transit for Cleveland ought to attract more than local interest for several reasons. In the first place, such a report is of great value to other cities in suggesting how similar investigations ought to be made. The cities of the country are giving too little attention to the vital need of rapid transit lines as factors in directing growth in the right direction. Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Baltimore are all certainly large enough for rapid transit, the too long postponement of which means a loss of time to the citizens, a lack of healthful circulation of the inhabitants, and the menace of congestion in business districts if not in tenements.

With the breakdown of electric railways all over the country, cities are being faced with the possibility of being forced into the transportation business themselves, just in order to keep the lines running. Therefore, the more that public officials and people in general study the transit problems of different localities, the better equipped the official and the citizen will be to meet the responsibility of public operation where conditions bring it about. While relatively few cities may see any immediate need of real rapid transit lines, all communities are in need of having their growth properly stimulated by means of an adequate electric railway system; and a consideration of the experience and the mistakes of larger cities may help the smaller ones when they too have outgrown their surface lines. The Cleveland report itself shows the need of a broader point of view in dealing with the problems of rapid transit, and especially a greater consideration for the experience of other cities.

Underground Terminal Proposed for
Cleveland's Surface Cars

CITY.

The Cleveland Rapid Transit report has already been abstracted in the technical press so that it may already be quite familiar to some of the readers of THE AMERICAN Briefly speaking, in order to relieve the traffic congestion in the downtown section, it is proposed by the engineers to place the surface

minating under the Public Square in a large terminal having five loops and fourteen platforms. Ten subway tracks will enter and leave this terminal, spreading out into seventeen tracks in the station itself. It is recommended that the subways for surface cars eventually become part of a rapid transit system radiating from the Public Square, the first line built to be located on Euclid and Detroit Avenues, crossing the city from east to west, this first route to be supplemented by successive branch lines.

The cost of the initial surface car subways and the terminal under the Public Square is estimated at about $15,000,000 at present prices. As this expenditure would hardly bring in any additional revenue, tho making some saving in the expense of operating the present surface cars, it is recommended that the necessary funds should be provided by the issuance of municipal bonds.

Layout Appears to be Inadequate Admirable as many of the features of the report are, it is hard to look at the plan of the enormous subway terminal for the Public Square without feeling that the Cleveland scheme is fundamentally wrong in placing the surface cars underground at such great expense. Huge as the proposed terminal is, it

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SUGGESTED TRACK ARRANGEMENT FOR LOOP

cars underground in shallow subways, all ter- SUBWAYS UNDER PUBLIC SQUARE, CLEVELAND, O.

is not as large as it rightly ought to be, or as complicated as it probably would have to be in the near future in order to handle the traffic adequately. For one thing, the plan does not provided separate loading and unloading platforms for the cars as they come in, a feature found absolutely necessary at the largest terminals in Boston, after long experience with conflicting currents of passengers. Neither does the single mezzanine passage feeding the seventeen tracks appear likely to be adequate for incoming, outgoing and transfer passengers. Park Street Station, the principal terminal of the first Boston subway, proved inadequate almost as soon as it was opened, 22 years ago, and the station has had to be altered and enlarged greatly at different times since.

Boston's Surface Car Subways
Disappointing

But the fundamental experience of Boston, covering a period of 22 years, has been that subways for surface cars are highly undesirable from almost every point of view. Boston had been building surface car subways from time to time since 1897 without much regard to the expense of construction or operation, until the Boston Elevated Railway Company began to find it had taken on more fixed changes than it could carry. An exhaustive investigation of the trouble was made by John A. Beeler for the Massachusetts Public Service Commission, and his chief recommendation was that all surface cars should be immediately removed from subways and viaducts and their place taken by trains. Mr. Beeler not only found that the operation of surface cars underground was wasteful in the extreme, but that it was undesirable from every point of view. The average cost of carrying a passenger on the surface lines of Boston was found to be 4.86 cents out of every 5 cents collected, whereas the cost of carrying the same passenger underground was no less than 8.10 cents for every 5 cents of revenue. Mr. Beeler further showed that an investment of only about $400,000 for making the change from surface cars to trains would bring about a saving in operating expenses of nearly $1,000,000 a year, and if his advice had been followed, the fare in Boston would never have had to be raised to the 10 cent figure, where it stands to-day, with a $4,000,000 deficit besides to be paid out of taxation.

Of course, if the $15,000,000 subway loops proposed for Cleveland are to be carried entirely by general taxation, the financial objection to the plan does not have so much weight. At the same time, is it worth while to spend such a large sum for a temporary expedient which has proved so unsatisfactory in Boston from every standpoint?

Cleveland Plan Would Increase Congestion

There are objections to the Cleveland plan even more fundamental than those already raised. Most serious of all is the influence which the terminal would have in crystalizing congestion of business and traffic about the Public Square. Even with surface cars removed, automobiles would quickly take their place, and there might be no real relief as far as the pedestrian is concerned. But to go still further, would not Cleveland, and every other city with a congested business district, do well to try to spread such congestion out as much as possible, instead of building a terminal which would tend to more concentration than ever.

Pittsburgh's Proposed Subsurface Loop Open to Similar Objections

The city of Pittsburgh has recently initiated a plan for a down-town subway loop for surface cars somewhat similar in idea to the Cleveland scheme, but open to still more serious objections. Costing about $6,000,000, the Pittsburgh subway could only accommodate about 60 per cent of the existing surface cars and would exclude entirely the North Side and West End cars, which would still have to be looped back on the surface on the edge of the business district. This plan would perpetuate the worst feature of the Pittsburgh street railway system in having no thru routes across the city and in requiring a double fare and change of cars for all thru passengers, a policy which not only imposes a most unjust charge upon the public and greatly increases the traffic congestion in the business section, but unquestionably deprives the company of a large amount of revenue from thru and short-haul traffic, and adds largely to the expense of operation.

Cleveland has also clung to the same highly questionable policy of having no thru cars, but charges only an extra cent to cross the city, or 6 cents in all; whereas

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