To H & M Stockholders:
 

Marcli 7, 1951
 

Transportation
 

Transportation in Metropolitan New
York is a conglomeration of railroads,
subways, bridges, tunnels, and highways;
of trains, buses, taxis, and automobiles
—- all valiantly but vainly endeavoring
to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of
the world's greatest city.

In 1930 New York City's population .
was 6,930,000 and there were 10,901,-
000 people in Metropolitan New York.
The 1950 census shows the City with a
population of 7,835,000 and Metropoli¬
tan New York with 12,832,000.

Despite this population growth, no
public official has taken effective action
to bring into being a modern unified
mass transportation system to transport
passengers to and from the City. To
be sure, there is the nucleus of such
a unified mass transportation system in
the Long Island Railroad east of the
City; the Hudson & Manhattan and the
Pennsylvania Railroads on the west;
and the New York Central and New
York, New Haven and Hartford Rail¬
roads on the north.

The Long Island Railroad has the ad¬
vantage of being one coordinated system
with direct access to two terminals in the
City — Penn Station in Manhattan and
the Atlantic Avenue Station in Brooklyn
— with fairly easy access to the City
subways.
 

In New Jersey, there is no integrated
mass transportation system. The Penn¬
sylvania Railroad carries some pas¬
sengers through Newark to Penn Station
in New York. Others ride to its Newark
and Jersey City stations, where they
transfer to Hudson & Manhattan trains.
The Erie, Lackawanna, Baltimore &
Ohio, Susquehanna, Reading, and Jersey
Central Railroads have their stations at
various locations on the Jersey side of
the Hudson River. Passengers take fer¬
ries, buses, or the Hudson Tubes to get
to New York.

New York City officials more than fifty
years ago had vision enough to start
building a vast mass transportation sys¬
tem within the City. But officials outside
tiie City in the metropolitan area left
mass transportation to various and sun¬
dry railroads. None of these railroads
took advantage of bus feeder lines. So
instead of building up and improving
mass transportation facilities to comfort¬
ably carry passengers to the City, the
railroads, under the competitive pressure
of tax exempt bridges and tunnels, have
heen slipping fast. Some have disap¬
peared entirely.

Railroads serving New" Jersey and
New York commuters carried 177,848,-
000 passengers in 1929. They now
carry but 97,700,000 passengers. As a
consequence, they have been unable to