The department of city transit shall have the care, management, administration, and supervision of any and all transit facilities, purchased, leased, located, constructed, or otherwise acquired, equipped, owned, maintained, used, or operated by such city. Such transit facilities shall include railways, and extensions thereof, for the transportation of persons and property over, under, upon, through, and across any streets, highways, avenues, bridges, viaducts, rivers, waters, and public and private lands, or partly over, under, upon, through, and across all or any of the same. They shall also be taken to mean and to include tunnels, subways, bridges, elevated structures, tracks, poles, wires, conduits, power-houses, substations, lines for the transmission of power, car-barns, shops, yards, sidings, turn-outs, switches, stations, and approaches thereto, cars and motive equipment, and all works, buildings, appliances, and appurtenances, necessary and convenient for the proper construction, equipment, maintenance, and operation of such transit facilities or any one or more of them. It shall be the duty of the director to take the necessary action to enforce and carry into effect the laws of this Commonwealth and ordinances of such city pertaining to transit facilities as defined by this article. The director shall, from time to time, make such recommendations to the council of such city as to him shall seem proper for the improvement and development of the facilities for transportation of persons and property within such city.