Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 202, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1910 — QUEER WAY TO MAKE TIME [ARTICLE]

QUEER WAY TO MAKE TIME

Correspondent Says It Can Be Done by Running Slower in New York’s Subway. A curious and interesting suggestion for Improvement of the subway service In New York has been made in a letter to the New York Evening Post. It is printed over the signature L. H., and it shows how it is possible to greatly increase the number of trains. Paradoxical as it sounds, this is to be done by reducing speed. The scheme depends on the fact that if there are cars enough the carrying capacity of a road is limited only by the number of cars that are dispatched in a given time. At present two minutes’ headway is the least that is considered safe for trains that often run at the rate of 35 miles an hour. If the headway could be reduced to a minute and a half, the number of trains in an hour would be 40 instead of 30, and the carrying capacity would be correspondingly increased. L. H. finds if the speed be reduced from 35 miles an hour to about 28 miles, the trains can be stopped In about 180 feet instead of about 300 feet. He also finds, through computation too long to reproduce here, that when slow time over certain portions of the route is taken into account and alsq the time lost in slowing down, the 28 mile train would need only two minutes more than the 35 mile train in running between Ninety-sixth street and the Brooklyn bridge. He is right in holding that lengthening the trip by two minutes would be a small price to pay for the Increased number of cars that could be run.—Hartford Times.