Lebensraum for the Straphanger

Followed by tail-coated plenipotentiaries, duck-bottomed Fiorello H. LaGuardia last week borrowed a nickel, pressed through the turnstiles into the subterranean maze. Donning a conductor's cap, he posed at the controls of a shiny new train, then settled back with proud satisfaction as it slithered off through the spotless white tunnel which even smelled clean. Manhattan's Sixth Avenue Subway had been opened.

For years most New Yorkers have agreed on a program for bettering the lot of the subway sardine: 1) unification of the city's three systems (Interborough Rapid Transit. Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, the city-owned Independent) under municipal ownership & operation; 2) maintenance of the 5-c- fare; 3) more subways to relieve congestion. But the history of Unification reads like a machine-age edition of Pilgrim's Progress. The city had to find ways & means of setting aside contracts with IRT and BMT (good until 1967, 1969), raising money enough to buy out private interests. After nearly 20 years of litigation, haggling, interdepartmental strife, the city last year bought a weakened BMT, a bankrupt IRT. Last June--36 years after the opening of Manhattan's IRT subway--she merged them with her own Independent.

This brought under city ownership the longest underground transit system in the world--130 miles of subway routes (London. 75 miles; Paris, 70). Together with an additional 120 miles of elevated lines, it carried 2.255,000,000 passengers during the last fiscal year, more than were carried by any other railroad. But the below-cost 5-c- fare--politically inexpedient to change --has piled deficit upon deficit on New York's subways. Not until 1982 will the last of the present transit debt be paid off. Fortnight ago, an apprehensive Citizens Budget Commission put the total ultimate cost to the city of existing lines at $3,295,000,000, offset by estimated past and future revenues of $1,105,000,000. But under Unification the Board of Transportation hopes to cut down expenses. Last week it was estimated that operating costs plus interest, before depreciation, had been reduced to 6 1/4-c- a passenger.

The new Sixth Avenue route, four and a half years abuilding, cost $60,000,000, is the world's most expensive subway mile for mile. As an engineering feat, it is probably the most complex in railroad history. Within its short 2.2 miles, contractors burrowed under or over six other rapid transit tunnels, had to hold up the heavy overhead Sixth Avenue El (since torn down) and most of the buildings along the route with piles driven down to bed rock. The cut & cover method (trench-like excavation covered with wooden flooring) necessitated digging through a tangle of telephone cables, power lines, water mains, gas pipes, pneumatic mail tubes, sewer pipes, steam mains, telegraph wires, police and fire alarm lines, conduits for refrigerator brine, burglar alarm wires, quotation ticker lines, traffic signal wires. Without suspending these services, the pipes and wires had to be slung from the flooring or rerouted on the surface. Where the cut & cover method was not adaptable, direct tunneling had to be done--sometimes with compressed air and a shield under sandhog conditions. Among other discomfitures: cold (subways take several years to warm up).

Features of the new line include doorless telephone booths soundproofed to keep out the roar of trains, promenades in & out of the elaborate 34th Street station by which one can walk all the way to 42nd Street. Proud but not satisfied is the city's Board of Transportation. Included in plans for the far future : an East Side subway to replace the 2nd and 3rd Avenue elevateds, a subway under Central Park, four new tunnels under the East River and one to Staten Island.

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