improvements included in the project of the Pennsylvania Railroad
Company for the New York District. While it is impossible, in this
introductory paper, to analyze fully the transportation problem at New
York, it seems desirable to indicate briefly some of the more obvious
effects which the improvements may be expected to produce upon the
distribution and handling of traffic.

New York City owes its position as the business metropolis of the
country mainly to its magnificent harbor and the extensive waterfronts
on its deep, wide rivers, which furnish unrivaled facilities, at a short
distance from the sea, for foreign and domestic water-borne commerce,
its foreign commerce being about half the total for the whole country.
The water-transportation facilities of the port and its tributaries,
therefore, have always been guarded with jealous care, not only by the
local commercial interests but also by the General Government.

During recent years, however, the population of the metropolitan
district has increased so enormously that New York is now the greatest
terminal passenger and freight traffic center in the country; and in
manufactures it ranks first among American cities. The new commercial
interests thus created are of at least equal importance with those of
the water-borne commerce, although their existence and development are
largely the result of the water facilities of the port.

The local passenger and freight traffic of the Pennsylvania and of other
railroads reaching the west shore of the North River is conducted by
car-floats and ferry-boats which deliver their loads at piers on the
Manhattan waterfront and elsewhere in the harbor. These boats obstruct
and endanger the free navigation of the channels and occupy space along
the waterfront greatly needed for the accommodation of the long-distance