The yardmaster’s office—in an abandoned switch-tower

“It seems incredible,” said a railroad officer just the other day “but this suburban problem is all but overwhelming for us. It does not increase our revenues at so wonderful a pace, but it does increase in volume from 20 to 25 per cent a year; and think how that keeps us hustling, making facilities for it. There is not a railroad entering New York to-day that could not dismiss its passenger terminal problems to-morrow, if it were not for the Commuter. There is not a railroad coming into New York that could not handle all its through business in a train-house of from four to five tracks. Instead of that, what do we see? The Erie with five through trains requiring a terminal of sixteen tracks; the Lackawanna, with the same number of through trains, a new terminal of even greater size, the overwhelming passenger terminal problem being repeated at every corner of New York, just because of the tremendous annual increase in the suburban passenger business.”

The great reconstruction of the Grand Central terminal facilities in the heart of New York, and the erection of a new station there, as described in detail in an earlier chapter, is directly due to the Commuter. When the new station with its double tier of tracks is finished, there will be thirty-two platform tracks in the double train-house, an amount far in excess of that needed for even the great volume of through business that goes and comes over the lines of the New York Central and the New York, New Haven, & Hartford, the two systems that use it. And the new station, involving a tremendous expenditure of money, of brains, and of energy, is not all.

The New Haven has electrified its four-track main line all the way out to Stamford, Conn., in order that it may in some measure cope with this increasing flow of suburban traffic over its already crowded main-line tracks. It has wrestled with the unanticipated problems of electrification because it has been facing a situation that left it no time to experiment elsewhere and approach its main-line problem with deliberation. More and more folk were settling in the suburban towns in its territory each month, and deliberation was quite out of their calculations. The Commuter is rarely deliberate.

So the New Haven, with all the resources of a giant carrier, has found each new measure of relief swallowed up in the new flood and has turned to more radical methods. It has been apparent to its managers for some time past that even the new Grand Central, with its wonderful capacity, would some day prove inadequate, for the reason that the New York Central—the actual owners of the property—was also trying to cope with its own great increase in suburban traffic, and would eventually require more and more space for its own Commuters. With such a possibility in the future—not a distant future with the suburban business doubling in volume every four or five years—the New Haven sought to develop an unimportant freight branch leading from New Rochelle down to the Harlem River. It has almost finished the work of transforming this into a great electric carrier, six tracks in width. Railroad engineers show no hesitancy in saying that eight-track trunks will be needed out of New York in every direction within a dozen years. The Harlem River branch of the New Haven, once it is provided with a suitable terminal, will become a great artery of suburban traffic. It will give trunk capacity to make possible the development of a great new area lying just inland from the Sound, and yet within from 40 to 50 miles of New York City.

A third project in which New Haven capital is known to be interested is that of a high-speed, four-track suburban electric railroad also to reach into the Sound territory as far as Port Chester, with an important branch, diverging to White Plains, the shire-town of Westchester County. This line will feed into the main line of the New York subway, and so avoid cramping the terminals still further. The terminals are the crux of the whole great problem of handling suburban traffic.

The New York Central has also electrified its tracks for a zone of some 40 to 50 miles from its terminal. This work was started primarily by a distressing accident in its old smoke-filled tunnel, that ran the length of Park Avenue under Manhattan Island, but New York Central officers are to-day free to admit that the electrification was close at hand in any event. The operation of a terminal so closely planned as the new Grand Central, with its train-sheds and yards built in layers, would have been a physical impossibility with smoky, dirty, steam locomotives.

The New York Central has been, as we shall see in greater detail in the chapter on the coming of electricity, the first of the standard steam railroads entering New York to provide suburban trains of multiple unit motor-cars, similar to those used in rapid transit subway and elevated trains. The great advantage of these trains over trains handled by either steam or electric locomotives is an operating advantage. The train may be so quickly turned in terminals as to bring the terminal problem down an appreciable percentage, and so to give a greater hauling capacity to main-line tracks. The Central, wedged in tightly by the high hills that lie to the north of the metropolis, has had to pin its faith to plans that utilize the present tracks to the uttermost capacity.

The railroads crossing New Jersey and reaching the west bank of the Hudson have not been behind the routes that enter from the north in providing for the suburban business. The recently opened McAdoo Tunnel, linking the Jersey terminals of the Erie, the Lackawanna, and the Pennsylvania with both the downtown and the uptown theatre, hotel, and shopping district of Manhattan, has been a great stimulus to the suburban development across the Hudson.

The Lackawanna has done its part by boring a second tunnel under the Bergen Hill, parallel to its original tube, giving a four-track entrance to its fine new terminal, and relieving the congestion of suburban traffic night and morning at its worst point, the neck of the bottle. The Erie has already completed, as a part of its extensive terminal reconstruction-work in Jersey City, a similar project, a four-track open cut through the stout backbone of Bergen Hill. The open cut replaces completely the so-called Bergen Tunnel, which has already become a matter of history.

We have already told of the Pennsylvania terminal in New York. The Pennsylvania built the new station for through travel rather than for the Commuter, at the outset. But the Pennsylvania, with the exception of a brisk traffic out to Newark, is hardly a big suburban road, in the New York metropolitan district. The great volume of Commuters who will flock to its station nightly, will be bound east, not west. The Long Island Railroad, its property stretching less than one hundred miles east from New York, through what is one of the most attractive residential localities in the world, is almost exclusively a suburban system. Long Island is not a manufacturing or agricultural territory of consequence. There is not a town of 10,000 souls east of the New York City line. Freight traffic and through traffic, aside from some summer excursion business, is conspicuous by its absence. Yet the Long Island operates through its local station at Jamaica (an even dozen miles distant from the new Pennsylvania terminal), more than 800 trains a day. That, of itself, represents a volume of traffic, and speaks wonders for the desirability of the broad and sandy island as an escape from the city to the country.

“We have from 18,000 to 20,000 Commuters all the year round,” said a Long Island official, just the other day; “and this branch of our traffic—our chief stronghold—is increasing at the rate of 25 per cent annually. We are trying to increase our facilities to keep pace with the demand made upon them; that is why we became tenants in the new Pennsylvania Station. For our share of that work we will pay $65,000,000—some money. But we cut twenty minutes off every Commuter’s trip in each direction every day, and that is worth while in a day when every road is reaching out for new business. We do not consider that $65,000,000 to save a man forty minutes a day is money ill-spent; but I am frank in saying that we also expect our 25 per cent annual increase to remain for several years in order to make good such an expenditure.”

Part of that $65,000,000 is yet to be spent on the electrification of the Long Island suburban lines, within a zone of from 30 to 40 miles out from the new terminal. The through trains running to the far eastern points of the island will run direct from the Pennsylvania Station as far as Jamaica by electricity, heavy motors hauling the standard equipment. At Jamaica, in a million-dollar transfer station that is part of the big improvement scheme, the steam locomotives will take up their part of the work. Electricity for long stretches of standard railroad where the traffic is comparatively slight is still an economic impossibility.

So much for New York, where the lead has been taken in providing suburban service on the railroads operated by electricity. The problem is being approached in Boston—who, like her larger sister, refuses to stay “put.” South Station and North Station, on opposite sides of the city, are of the largest size, but they are beginning to feel the strain of traffic, which forges ahead every year. The Metropolitan Improvements Commission of that city has already made a careful study of the problem. It plans to relieve the situation by constructing a four-track tunnel from one station to the other, and operating both of them—as far as suburban traffic is concerned—as through stations rather than as terminals. In a word, Boston & Maine local trains entering North Station would not end their runs there as at present, but would continue through the proposed tunnel to a second stop at South Station, where they would become outgoing New York, New Haven, & Hartford suburban locals. The same operation would be continued in a reverse direction. A more complicated adaptation of the scheme from a construction standpoint would still use the connecting tunnel and provide car-yards for the Boston & Maine trains outside of South Station, with a similar yard for the New Haven locals just beyond North Station. The main gain made by such a plan is the elimination of switching—the same point at which the New York Central and the Long Island have aimed in making their suburban trains of multiple units. With the hauling in and out of empty trains to and from a terminal eliminated, the capacity may be almost doubled. Another gain is the convenience to passengers who under such a plan would be enabled to reach either side of the city without changing cars, and a recourse to street transit facilities. The Boston plan, of course, embodies a change from steam to electricity as a motive power. It is one of the most comprehensive plans yet submitted for the solving of the great problem of getting the city out into the country.

In Philadelphia, they are feeling the pressure of the Commuter at both the big downtown terminals, the Pennsylvania and the Reading, while the first of these roads is already planning to electrify its suburban lines and to give Broad Street Station exclusively to this class of traffic. Philadelphia is such a wide-spreading and sprawling town that the trolley lines have afforded little real rapid transit to the outlying sections, while relief by subways and elevated lines has so far been meagre. As a result, a great burden of interurban as well as suburban traffic has been laid upon the railroads there, and they have been compelled repeatedly to enlarge both track and station facilities.

The Illinois Central, carrying a heavy traffic south of Chicago, has prepared plans for the electrification of 325 miles of its suburban lines, and radical enlargement of terminal facilities. The Illinois Central has been very progressive in its methods of handling the Commuter traffic. Its side-door cars, permitting quick loading and unloading, have long marked a progressive step in equipment. The Chicago and Northwestern, in its splendid new white marble terminal on the West Side of Chicago, will give its chief use toward the upbuilding of a suburban traffic, already strong and well developed.

The Commuter covers a varied zone. His station may be less than a mile from the terminal and his home still within the crowded confines of the town, or he may be the last passenger of the train as it reaches the far end of its suburban run. The average commutation district runs about 30 miles out, with by far the heavier part of the traffic in the first 15 miles of this. Most of the railroads that cluster in at New York, however, issue commutation tickets out over a 70 or 80-mile radius. One man for many years held the record as a long-distance Commuter. He preferred to sleep nights within the quiet confines of Philadelphia and his 90-mile trip to New York, with a 90-mile return at the end of every day became a mere incident in his life. His record was beaten this year. A man arrives and departs from the Grand Central Station five days out of the week, who travels 320 miles on every one of them. He catches a fast train from his home town at seven o’clock in the morning, breakfasts on the train, and is at his New York office at 11:30 o’clock. He leaves his desk at 3:30 o’clock, dines on the returning express, and is home by eight. His daily trip, with all incidental expenses, aggregates more than $12.00; so he deserves to rank as the Champion Commuter.

If few Commuters can approach the mileage record of this man there are many who do not hesitate at extra expenditures for their comfort. About all of the best suburban expresses that come into New York carry some sort of club or private-parlor cars. The club car is one of the most elaborate developments of the entire Commuter idea. It is a comfortable coach, which is rented to a group of responsible men coming either from a single point or a chain of contiguous points. The railroad charges from $250 to $300 a month for the use of this car in addition to the commutation fares, and the “club” arranges dues to cover this cost and the cost of such attendants and supplies as it may elect to place on its roving house. It must guarantee a certain number of riders to the railroad every trip, so the membership of the “club” is kept high enough to allow for a reasonable percentage failing to use the car daily. Some railroads go at the thing in another way. They supply the car and its attendants and make a monthly extra charge, in addition to commutation. The car is entirely filled with regular riders, so it is in a sense a club car.

Such a car has been running for some years on one of the suburban trains of the Harlem road. It is unique in some ways, and in these an outgrowth of early customs. The first of these began years ago, when the Oldest Commuter began his habit of riding to and from town in the baggage-car. There is something about a baggage-car that fascinates the ordinary man traveller. Perhaps it is the solemn rule of the railroad that attempts to prevent him from riding in this form of conveyance. At any rate in this particular case the Oldest Commuter gradually picks up an acquaintance with the baggageman; and, presuming upon that acquaintance gradually appropriates the baggageman’s old chair for his own use. The baggageman was good-natured, for the Oldest Commuter was a generous fellow and never forgot Christmas-times and the like. He got another old chair from somewhere, and all was well until the Next Oldest Commuter absorbed the baggageman’s chair, and the baggageman had to bring a third into his car. The Next to the Next Oldest Commuter swallowed that up, and after a time there was a row of comfy old-fashioned chairs all around the edge of the dingy baggage-car, and an atmosphere of smoke and good stories that warmed the cockles of the baggageman’s heart. You could have raised $100,000,000 for an enterprise from the crowd of men who rode regularly in that little car, but the baggageman neither knew nor cared about that. He simply knew that there was a good crowd of Commuters who rode with him daily.

After another little time the railroad took cognizance of that particular baggage-car. The general passenger agent, who was a fellow both wise and solemn, talked with the general manager, and one day that little club of Commuters had a surprise. Instead of their baggage-car, the down train hauled a bright new car all fitted with fancy things—curtains and carpets and big stuffed chairs, and the baggageman was rigged out in a fine new uniform as an attendant. The general passenger agent fondly imagined that he had made the one really happy stroke of his existence.

He had not. His was a colossal mistake. The “club” called for its baggage-car back again. Its members were men who were surfeited with mahoganies and impressive stuffed chairs and thick carpets. They demanded their old dingy car, with its four little windows, its rough board floor and the wooden armchairs. They got it back. The big, new, showy car was sent off upon another route; and the baggage-car—itself a club to which many a soul enviously craves for admission—makes its run six times a week on one of the fastest expresses on the line.

Groups of men have staterooms regularly reserved for them in the parlor cars of the finest suburban expresses, and there is never a word said of what goes on behind those closed doors. There come whispers of “antes” that are as high as a church steeple, but the railroad does not concern itself with the morals of its passengers to the point of breaking in upon closed doors. The porters may know, but the porters are traditionally wise and more than traditionally close-mouthed. One big New York editor hired a stateroom for his daily ride in and out to his suburban home. His secretary and his stenographer are closeted in it with him, and on the 50-minute ride twice each day he dictates the daily editorial utterances that delight a great congregation of his readers.

Special trains for Commuters are no particular novelty. Almost every big system has some daily suburban trains that are on its working time-tables and not upon the schedules that are given out to the public. A group of aristocratic Commuters living north of Boston in the district around Manchester have their private special into the North Station every summer morning. It is an all-parlor-car train, the most luxurious suburban on the line, yet not one Commuter in a thousand knows a thing about it. A similar train arrives and departs daily at the South Station. Others are in service out of New York. You can buy both exclusiveness and elegance from the railroad.

The Commuter is not more concerned about that 5:37 than is the railroad. It makes train and Commuter both its concern, because that is the way it seeks to build up its profitable suburban traffic.

“We are getting more of the city out into the country each year,” says a big suburban passenger agent; “and with the wide increase in the use of electricity as a motive power for the standard railroads this business is bound for increases that we can hardly foresee to-day. I think that I am quite safe in predicting that another decade will see the belt of from 30 to 50 miles outside of New York terminals as thickly settled as the belt from 10 to 30 miles is to-day settled. The railroaders have done their part by expensive increase in terminal and track facilities; they have helped the real-estate men in their broad advertising of the possibilities of suburban life: the harvest is all that now remains to be reaped.”