At least year delay if grade separation is ordered at once

No prospects of immediate work, City Engineer Stewart admits—Plans must be prepared and costs determined

Federal-City plan is not endorsed

Prospects of work immediately for the unemployed through the construction of the much-discussed grade separation disappeared yesterday in the light of facts secured from Murray Stewart, Civic Works Department engineer.

If the Dominion Railway Board should yield to pressure from the King Government and make the order for northwest grade separation, as Mayor Wemp suggest, as year or eighteen months would elapse before the work could be completed.

A considerable portion of the time would be taken up with the preparation of that all-important detail—the plans. Then there would be the arrangement regarding the apportionment of costs and the formality which requires the approval of the board for the plans before the work could be proceeded with.

Mr. Stewart informed The Globe there were no plans for the separation and these would have to be drawn and approved of by the railways and the city's engineers. Then the question of cost would have to be determined after which the Railway Board would be asked for its approval.

The work would have to go on in an orderly fashion, said Mr. Stewart. I should say that if the order was made at once, the work could not be completed for a year at least, and possibly a longer period. Work of a similar character undertaken by the City took the same length of time.

Officials of the city charged with the responsibility of arranging details of such an important piece of work would not endorse the suggestion that the Federal Government and the city should do the work, pointing out that if this were so it would set a dangerous precedent and relive the railways, one of which is privately owned, of its obligations.

Railways: C.N.Rys., C.P.Ry.

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