Fans for Subway

Rotary fans at stations on the present Subway and partitions between the tracks of future routes are the solutions of the ventilation problem laid before the Rapid Transit Board yesterday by Chief Engineer Rice. Both of these plans have been tried and approved in other underground routes, and were left out of New York's, presumably only because the designers believed them unnecessary. But, whether the evil is abated in this way or not, the public would like to have its curiosity satisfied as to the cause. Why is the Subway four or five degrees hotter than the street? Is animal heat responsible, or, as a writer in a leading engineering Journal recently suggested, is the excessive heat a mere equivalent of the power used in running trains? This same writer declared that, unless the Subway air were completely renewed once in seven minutes or so, the place would be even hotter than it is now. Is the discomfort, then, due simply to the temperature of comparatively pure air? I' not, is the impurity traceable to the advertising signs and stands, as Dr. Lee declares, to exhalations from the electrical equipment, as Mr. Tesla believes, or to condensations on the walls, as other observers have asserted? Of course, the Rapid Transit authorities will be abundantly thanked for any relief. But, besides exorcising the demon, we should much appreciate it if the Board would find out its name.