THE PORT AS A “‘ TERMINAL /
municipal administration. No autonomous port authority
is invested with supervision over the railway systems for a
radius of twenty miles or so of the port.

One of the difficulties which the Port of New York has
had to encounter is that the commercial and maritime
interests of the city are centred in the Island of Manhattan.
Of the numerous trunk lines serving the port, only one has
a terminus on Manhattan; in the other cases, the lines
run as far as the New Jersey shore, whence the rolling
stock is conveyed across the river Hudson by means of a
service of car floats, or train ferries, except that the cars
are not landed in New York. These car floats—large
pontoons accommodating some thirty to forty wagons in
two or three parallel rows—are towed across from piers in
Jersey City to piers on Manhattan Island, and in this way
they absorb a good deal of riverside space which might
otherwise be used for shipping, and, at the same time, the
service is necessarily slow and involves a good deal of
superfluous handling of goods between wagon and float and
vehicle.

In its Comprehensive Plan for the Improvement of the
Port, issued in 1921, the Authority devised a system of
underground electric belt railways to bring the goods
from the terminals on the New Jersey side of the Hudson
to a series of distributing terminals, not on the waterfront,
but in the interior of Manhattan. This system, though
exhibiting many admirable features, possessed the draw-
back of being costly in construction, and difficult of
realization within a reasonable period of time. The
Authority have lately substituted, at any rate as a tem-
porary measure, a scheme of unit-containers to be lifted
on to vans from railway wagons, and so conveyed either

by ferry, or through the Holland Tunnel, across the Hudson
and thence direct to one or other of nine distributing
depots to be established in districts of equal traffic density.

This arrangement involves less outlay, and it is contended

that it will appreciably relieve the congestion which is only

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