Transit systems have grown up in modern cities because of the needs and desires of people for moving about more than they did a century ago. In the old days, when towns were small and the uses to which districts were put were not specialized as now, people could walk to their work, or else had space to keep a horse or two. As cities increased in size and compactness, the keeping of horses had to diminish, and distances grew, as well as the desires of people to go about more. Public conveyances consequently came more and more into use; while the constantly improving facilities, notably electricity, increased the tendency to ride.
It would appear that the rate of a city's growth in people depends on the amount of intercommunication, just as the intensity of some chemical processes depends on the extent to which the different elements come together. So transit is now regarded as a necessity, and one which cities are beginning to feel, whatever the basis of ownership and operation, is too vital to be exploited solely for the gain there is in it.
Passenger transportation obviously has to meet the following needs:—First, carrying people to and from work; second, carrying people about their business during working hours, including shopping; third, carrying people about on social, educational, and recreative objects. The best transit system for meeting these needs is obviously that which conquers space and time most equally for all inhabitants at the lowest cost in money, convenience, safety and health. Of course people should not do unnecessary traveling,—walking, writing, and telephoning being desirable substitutes.
In American cities the economy of walking has been too much lost sight of, chiefly in the matter of getting to and from work. The largest demand on transit systems to-day is to carry people to work and back; and yet, curiously, this ought perhaps to be the least important kind of travel. For centuries, until a very recent time, everybody walked to business, and the poorest classes as well as some of the wealthy do still. The reason why so many have to live at a distance from their work is not the mere growth of cities, but our universal disregard of scientific town planning as practiced notably in Germany. We usually crowd most of our business into one center, and then have to ride a long way to get enough room for a single house. But congestion on transit lines is just awakening us to the fact that the common radial plan for a city is neither wholly necessary nor desirable.
It would look now as though the ideal city is a longitudinal one, with factories on the leeward side, after the European plan as found in Vienna and the new city of Letchworth, England; houses on the windward side away from the smoke; and stores and offices between. The whole city is narrow enough to enable people to walk across town to and from work, their homes being opposite their place of work or business. One or more high speed longitudinal transit lines would make the length of the city no greater bar to travel than getting about our congested business districts which are so often without even adequate surface transit. The ideal of universal walking to work, were it possible, would obviously abolish the rush hour travel, the cause of so many of the worst features of American city transit.
With existing, radial growing cities, it would seem best to try to replan on the longitudinal system as far as possible, modifying the ideal to fit topography and other present conditions. A rapid transit line is the best thing with which to begin the stretching out process in a city where no such facility already exists. By rigidly limiting the heights of buildings to the standards so successful in Europe, and then in some way preserving belts of houses alongside the business district as it begins to stretch, congestion may at least be checked. Of course it is impossible at this late day to provide many single houses within walking distance of a business district, though Boston has notably done so for both rich and poor with its Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and the West and North Ends.
But the conditions of Pittsburgh allow no simple alteration to fit the ideal plan. No single transit line can serve both sides of the Ohio, or the four shores of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Again, the question should be considered very carefully whether people ought to live too near the manufactories, on account of the smoke and the noise; and therefore whether the walking principle ought not to be waived in such a manufacturing region, and all the workers be transported up on the bluffs or beyond, where the air is purer, where more land is available for single houses, and where they can have quiet, healthy homes, making more efficient workers. If the smoke were not still so abundant, the fast transit lines should best lie along the rivers, with a belt of houses on the heights above. But as conditions are, the most desirable locations for houses are away to the east, north, and south of the business district, and so perhaps these are the regions which should first be made more accessible to the heart of the city.
The location of rapid transit lines in Pittsburgh obviously needs most careful study. It does not seem enough to connect East Liberty with the business district by a straight line, without serving the intervening territory. The situation needs the broadest study and outlook and the united judgment of the best minds in the city. A transit solution cannot be left to any interested company, but needs to be reached by considering the welfare of all the inhabitants, future as well as present.
