The Reconstruction of Moscow

In New York only in the bumper year of "prosperity" — 1928—did city transportation reach the figure of 560 journeys per inhabitant. However, it fell sharply in the years of the crisis, and even in 1933 when there was a certain economic improvement it was only 450 journeys per year, viz., less than in Moscow. Up to the present time, most of the passenger service in Moscow falls to the share of the street-cars, which convey 95 per cent of the city passengers. In recent years this form of municipal transportation has been greatly developed, as a result of which the length of, street-car lines reached 442.3 kilometres in 1934 as against 262 kilo- metres in 1913, and 336 kilometres in 1928. In the satne period, the number of street-cars increased from 1,256 in 1913 and 1,349 in 1928 to 2,475 by January 1, 1935, or almost twofold. A comparison of the increase in the number of street- car journeys with the increase in the length of the street- car lines and the number of new street-cars shows a great discrepancy— the latter two increasing much less than the number of journeys. This led to a considerable ag- gravation of the traffic strain. The Moscow street-cars carry 8,200,000 passengers per kilometre of double track. Hence the great overcrowding of the street-cars- — 775,000 per car annually. The load on the street-car system of Moscow — -.8,200,- 000 passengers per kilometre of track annually — -ex- ceeds not only the density of passenger movement in the Berlin street-cars, which carried about 1,440,000 passen- gers per kilometre of track in 1929, a peak year for Ber- lin traffic, but is even greater than the load on the subway ■lines of great cities like Berlin, which handles about 5,000,000 passengers per kilometre of track, Paris, which handles 7,000,000, and London, which handles 3,500,000.

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