Test 1

RE ADING

RE A D ING PA SSA GE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

The development of the London underground railway

In the first half of the 1800s, London’s population grew at an astonishing rate, and the central
area became increasingly congested. In addition, the expansion of the overground railway
network resulted in more and more passengers arriving in the capital. However, in 1846, a Royal
Commission decided that the railways should not be allowed to enter the City, the capital’s
historic and business centre. The result was that the overground railway stations formed a ring
around the City. The area within consisted of poorly built, overcrowded slums and the streets were
full of horse-drawn traffic. Crossing the City became a nightmare. It could take an hour and a half
to travel 8 km by horse-drawn carriage or bus. Numerous schemes were proposed to resolve these
problems, but few succeeded.

Amongst the most vocal advocates for a solution to London’s traffic problems was Charles
Pearson, who worked as a solicitor for the City of London. He saw both social and economic
advantages in building an underground railway that would link the overground railway stations
together and clear London slums at the same time. His idea was to relocate the poor workers who
lived in the inner-city slums to newly constructed suburbs, and to provide cheap rail travel for
them to get to work. Pearson’s ideas gained support amongst some businessmen and in 1851 he
submitted a plan to Parliament. It was rejected, but coincided with a proposal from another group
for an underground connecting line, which Parliament passed.

The two groups merged and established the Metropolitan Railway Company in August 1854. The
company’s plan was to construct an underground railway line from the Great Western Railway’s
(GWR) station at Paddington to the edge of the City at Farringdon Street – a distance of almost
5 km. The organisation had difficulty in raising the funding for such a radical and expensive
scheme, not least because of the critical articles printed by the press. Objectors argued that the
tunnels would collapse under the weight of traffic overhead, buildings would be shaken and
passengers would be poisoned by the emissions from the train engines. However, Pearson and his
partners persisted.

The GWR, aware that the new line would finally enable them to run trains into the heart of
the City, invested almost £250,000 in the scheme. Eventually, over a five-year period, £1m
was raised. The chosen route ran beneath existing main roads to minimise the expense of

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 Reading

demolishing buildings. Originally scheduled to be completed in 21 months, the construction of

the underground line took three years. It was built just below street level using a technique known
as ‘cut and cover’. A trench about ten metres wide and six metres deep was dug, and the sides
temporarily held up with timber beams. Brick walls were then constructed, and finally a brick
arch was added to create a tunnel. A two-metre-deep layer of soil was laid on top of the tunnel
and the road above rebuilt.

The Metropolitan line, which opened on 10 January 1863, was the world’s first underground
railway. On its first day, almost 40,000 passengers were carried between Paddington and
Farringdon, the journey taking about 18 minutes. By the end of the Metropolitan’s first year of
operation, 9.5 million journeys had been made.

Even as the Metropolitan began operation, the first extensions to the line were being authorised;
these were built over the next five years, reaching Moorgate in the east of London and
Hammersmith in the west. The original plan was to pull the trains with steam locomotives, using
firebricks in the boilers to provide steam, but these engines were never introduced. Instead, the
line used specially designed locomotives that were fitted with water tanks in which steam could
be condensed. However, smoke and fumes remained a problem, even though ventilation shafts
were added to the tunnels.

Despite the extension of the underground railway, by the 1880s, congestion on London’s streets
had become worse. The problem was partly that the existing underground lines formed a circuit
around the centre of London and extended to the suburbs, but did not cross the capital’s centre.
The ‘cut and cover’ method of construction was not an option in this part of the capital. The only
alternative was to tunnel deep underground.

Although the technology to create these tunnels existed, steam locomotives could not be used in
such a confined space. It wasn’t until the development of a reliable electric motor, and a means of
transferring power from the generator to a moving train, that the world’s first deep-level electric
railway, the City & South London, became possible. The line opened in 1890, and ran from the
City to Stockwell, south of the River Thames. The trains were made up of three carriages and
driven by electric engines. The carriages were narrow and had tiny windows just below the roof
because it was thought that passengers would not want to look out at the tunnel walls. The line
was not without its problems, mainly caused by an unreliable power supply. Although the City &
South London Railway was a great technical achievement, it did not make a profit. Then, in 1900,
the Central London Railway, known as the ‘Tuppenny Tube’, began operation using new electric
locomotives. It was very popular and soon afterwards new railways and extensions were added to
the growing tube network. By 1907, the heart of today’s Underground system was in place.

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 Reading

Questions 7–13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 7–13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

7 Other countries had built underground railways before the Metropolitan line
opened.
8 More people than predicted travelled on the Metropolitan line on the first
day.
9 The use of ventilation shafts failed to prevent pollution in the tunnels.
10 A different approach from the ‘cut and cover’ technique was required in London’s
central area.
11 The windows on City & South London trains were at eye level.
12 The City & South London Railway was a financial success.
13 Trains on the ‘Tuppenny Tube’ nearly always ran on time.

p. 120 19
 Reading

R E A D ING PA SSA GE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.

Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan’s

Skyscrapers
Katharine L. Shester reviews a book by Jason Barr about the development of
New York City
In Building the Skyline, Jason Barr takes the reader through a detailed history of New York
City. The book combines geology, history, economics, and a lot of data to explain why business
clusters developed where they did and how the early decisions of workers and firms shaped
the skyline we see today. Building the Skyline is organized into two distinct parts. The first is
primarily historical and addresses New York’s settlement and growth from 1609 to 1900; the
second deals primarily with the 20th century and is a compilation of chapters commenting
on different aspects of New York’s urban development. The tone and organization of the book
changes somewhat between the first and second parts, as the latter chapters incorporate aspects of
Barr’s related research papers.

Barr begins chapter one by taking the reader on a ‘helicopter time-machine’ ride – giving a
fascinating account of how the New York landscape in 1609 might have looked from the sky. He
then moves on to a subterranean walking tour of the city, indicating the location of rock and water
below the subsoil, before taking the reader back to the surface. His love of the city comes through
as he describes various fun facts about the location of the New York residence of early 19th-century
vice-president Aaron Burr as well as a number of legends about the city.

Chapters two and three take the reader up to the Civil War (1861–1865), with chapter two
focusing on the early development of land and the implementation of a grid system in 1811.
Chapter three focuses on land use before the Civil War. Both chapters are informative and well
researched and set the stage for the economic analysis that comes later in the book. I would
have liked Barr to expand upon his claim that existing tenements* prevented skyscrapers in
certain neighborhoods because ‘likely no skyscraper developer was interested in performing the
necessary “slum clearance”’. Later in the book, Barr makes the claim that the depth of bedrock**
was not a limiting factor for developers, as foundation costs were a small fraction of the cost of
development. At first glance, it is not obvious why slum clearance would be limiting, while more
expensive foundations would not.

* a tenement: a multi-occupancy building of any sort, but particularly a run-down apartment building or slum building
** bedrock: the solid, hard rock in the ground that lies under a loose layer of soil

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Test 3

Chapter four focuses on immigration and the location of neighborhoods and tenements in the
late 19th century. Barr identifies four primary immigrant enclaves and analyzes their locations
in terms of the amenities available in the area. Most of these enclaves were located on the least
valuable land, between the industries located on the waterfront and the wealthy neighborhoods
bordering Central Park.

Part two of the book begins with a discussion of the economics of skyscraper height. In chapter
five, Barr distinguishes between engineering height, economic height, and developer height —
where engineering height is the tallest building that can be safely made at a given time, economic
height is the height that is most efficient from society’s point of view, and developer height is the
actual height chosen by the developer, who is attempting to maximize return on investment.

Chapter five also has an interesting discussion of the technological advances that led to the
construction of skyscrapers. For example, the introduction of iron and steel skeletal frames made
thick, load-bearing walls unnecessary, expanding the usable square footage of buildings and
increasing the use of windows and availability of natural light. Chapter six then presents data on
building height throughout the 20th century and uses regression analysis to ‘predict’ building
construction. While less technical than the research paper on which the chapter is based, it is
probably more technical than would be preferred by a general audience.

Chapter seven tackles the ‘bedrock myth’, the assumption that the absence of bedrock close to the
surface between Downtown and Midtown New York is the reason for skyscrapers not being built
between the two urban centers. Rather, Barr argues that while deeper bedrock does increase foundation
costs, these costs were neither prohibitively high nor were they large compared to the overall cost
of building a skyscraper. What I enjoyed the most about this chapter was Barr’s discussion of how
foundations are actually built. He describes the use of caissons, which enable workers to dig down
for considerable distances, often below the water table, until they reach bedrock. Barr’s thorough
technological history discusses not only how caissons work, but also the dangers involved. While this
chapter references empirical research papers, it is a relatively easy read.

Chapters eight and nine focus on the birth of Midtown and the building boom of the 1920s.
Chapter eight contains lengthy discussions of urban economic theory that may serve as a
distraction to readers primarily interested in New York. However, they would be well-suited for
undergraduates learning about the economics of cities. In the next chapter, Barr considers two of
the primary explanations for the building boom of the 1920s — the first being exuberance, and
the second being financing. He uses data to assess the viability of these two explanations and
finds that supply and demand factors explain much of the development of the 1920s; though it
enabled the boom, cheap credit was not, he argues, the primary cause.

In the final chapter (chapter 10), Barr discusses another of his empirical papers that estimates
Manhattan land values from the mid-19th century to the present day. The data work that went into
these estimations is particularly impressive. Toward the end of the chapter, Barr assesses ‘whether
skyscrapers are a cause or an effect of high land values’. He finds that changes in land values
predict future building height, but the reverse is not true. The book ends with an epilogue, in
which Barr discusses the impact of climate change on the city and makes policy suggestions for
New York going forward.
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Test 3

Questions 32–35

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 32–35 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

32 The description in the first chapter of how New York probably looked from the air in
the early 1600s lacks interest.
33 Chapters two and three prepare the reader well for material yet to come.
34 The biggest problem for many nineteenth-century New York immigrant
neighbourhoods was a lack of amenities.
35 In the nineteenth century, New York’s immigrant neighbourhoods tended to
concentrate around the harbour.

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