Speed!

The officials of the London Underground Railways state that their trains are faster than those of New York, with the exception of expresses. The figures are for New York: locals, 13 miles per hour; expresses, west side, 20 miles per hour; east side, 23 miles per hour. London: no expresses; locals, 18 miles per hour; those skipping a few stations, 19 miles per hour.

They also state that Londoners walk faster than New Yorkers. Figures for New York: Broadway, average pace two and three-quarters to three miles per hour; Fifth Avenue, two and a half to three miles per hour. London: Strand and Oxford Street, three and three-quarters miles per hour.

Street cars in New York make nine miles an hour; those of London, ten. Though the speed limit of New York is 15 miles to London's 12, New York motor buses run at five miles between 31st and 72nd Streets; between 57th and 135th Streets at 11 miles. In London buses do seven miles per hour in the Strand and ten miles on "the comparatively empty" Bayswater Road.

Prominent New Yorkers connected with traffic statistics say the London contention is buncombe. According to Frank Hedley, President of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the average speed of local New York subway trains on both east and west sides is 16 miles per hour. From 96th and Chambers Street on the west side and from 125th Street and City Hall or Brooklyn Bridge on the east side an average speed, including stops, of 16 miles is maintained.

Dr. John A. Harris, special Deputy Police Commissioner in Charge of Traffic, says the average speed of the Fifth Avenue buses is 18 miles per hour. He also points out that London theatres are spread over an area of 15 miles, "so that they have no such problem as confronts us here in the theatrical district." In New York there are 200,000 people "arriving in the theatre district about the same time, creating a traffic problem found nowhere else in the world." He adds that London has no downtown rush in the morning nor no uptown rush in the evening. This is because the suburbs of London, like those of Boston, radiate from it.

It must be pointed out that the Strand is something like half the width of Broadway and that (due to the crowd) a sharp walk of three and three-quarter miles per hour is even a shade more than improbable. In Threadneedle Street, in the city, it can be said that the people, who swarm like ants, go faster than the presumptive vehicles that dare transgress its sanctity. In England all fares are paid according to distance; taxis are cheaper than in New York.

During all this furore about speed nothing about efficiency is said. The subway and bus systems of Paris are probably the most efficient in the world. The trains of the Nord-Sud and the Metropolitan, with three double doors on the side of each car, permit rapid exits and entrances. On a certain day, during the busiest hour, the longest stop from the Place Denfert-Rochereau to the Madelaine was only seven seconds.