Mass transit

“ As has been indicated, every day over 36 million people travel on forms of mass transit or public transportation in this country. More than 11 million commuters use rail and mass transit, while over twice this number, more than 25 million, use public or private school buses to travel to and from their schools. ”

“ I think all of us recognize that the energy crisis has given new urgency to the need to improve public transportation, not only in our cities but in rural areas as well. The program I have proposed this year will give communities not only more money but also more freedom to balance their own transportation needs. It will mark the strongest Federal commitment ever to the improvement of mass transit as an essential element of the improvement of life in our towns and cities. ”

“ In the coming decade, the most significant challenge facing the nation in transportation services will be to improve a deteriorating physical infrastructure of roadways, railroads, waterways and mass transit systems, in order to conserve costly energy supplies while promoting effective transportation services. ”

“ I would like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that energy efficient. And I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally, in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we're just building sprawl forever, those days are over. (Applause.) I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that's not a smart way to design communities. ”

“ Today, we are witnessing the beginning of a new era in space transportation with the development of commercial space vehicles.
As our cities grew, transit systems evolved to provide affordable, convenient urban transportation. The 20th Century brought the automobile, truck, intercity bus, rapid rail systems, and an expanded road system that now includes thousands of miles of interstate highways. ”

“ The next step in the progressive improvement of the art of inland transit, is the adaptation of the steam-engine to propel carriages on common roads. The practicability and advantage of the same power on railroads leads necessarily to enquire, whether there is any and what difference in the quality of railroads and turnpike roads, which would render a power of traction so profitable on the one impracticable on the other. ”

“ The solution of the mechanical problem of rapid transit will probably, in other words, tend greatly to relieve automatically the present congestion which we find in many of our large cities. Probably the best form of such rapid transit is underground electric roads, or subways. Transportation upon these roads must be made cheap enough to enable workingmen to live at a distance from their labor. With the solution of the problem of rapid transit it should be possible to scatter a city's population anywhere within a radius of thirty miles. ”

“ The art of constructing locomotive engines, so far from having attained a state of maturity, has not even emerged from its infancy. So complete was the ignorance of its powers which prevailed even among engineers, previous to the opening of the Liverpool railway, that the transport of heavy goods was regarded as the chief object of the undertaking, and its principal source of revenue. The incredible speed of transport, effected even in the very first experiments in 1830, burst upon the public, and on the scientific world, with all the effect of a new and unlooked-for phenomenon. ”

“ We must improve the flexibility of our transportation system and offer greater choice and diversity in transportation services. While the private automobile will continue to be the principal means of transportation for many Americans, public transportation can become an increasingly attractive alternative. We, therefore, want to explore a variety of paratransit modes, various types of buses, modern rapid transit, regional rail systems and light rail systems. ”

“ The two advantages of increased cheapness and speed, besides extending the amount of existing traffic, call into existence new objects of commercial intercourse. For the same reason that the reduced cost of transport, as I have shown, calls new soils into cultivation, it also calls into existence new markets for manufactured and agricultural produce. The great speed of transit, which has been proved to be practicable, must open a commerce between distant points in various articles, the nature of which does not permit them to be preserved so as to be fit for use beyond a certain time. ”

“ But the peculiar nature of a railway, the magnitude and weight of the loads which may be transported on it, and the prodigious speed which may be attained, render the transport of cattle, meat or fish of every species, to almost any distance, both easy and cheap. In process of time, when the railway system becomes extended, the metropolis and populous towns will therefore become markets, not, as at present, to districts within limited distances of them, but to the whole country within 200 miles of the metropolis. ”

“ But of one thing we may be hopeful: that even as the era of rail transportation served to bring all parts of the country into more intimate relation, so may it come to pass that the world of the future will find all its distant parts brought into more friendly contact by the development of these twentieth-century miracles of rapid transit. ”

“ It is pretty well forgotten now, thanks to the rapid transit afforded by the railway. Under all the circumstances, the enterprising men who constructed this road deserve every cent they received from it; it has saved thousands of lives to the population of the United States and other countries, and has added materially to the commercial facilities of the world. It was built under many discouragements, and the energy displayed in its construction was worthy of a liberal reward. ”

“ Yet with this double loop that I have so roughly indicated there could be a constant and high-speed operation of electric multiple-unit rapid transit trains, free from all street traffic interruptions. A man coming into the main passenger terminal of either town from New York or Chicago or any other outlying city, by a swift and easy platform change of cars, could be set down in a few more minutes in virtually any section that he wished to reach. ”

“ These would furnish partial relief to the congestion, while they would bring fresh traffic to the short distance service, which would become an important part of the elevated railroad system. Competition in what may be termed the trunk-line business need not, therefore, be disastrous to existing rapid transit lines. It would rather come as a relief, just as the street-car lines found the opening of the elevated roads to be twenty years before.
But the public paid little attention to the first discomforture of the elevated railroad magnates. ”

“ We're going to unleash the potential of all our regions by connecting them with world-class transit systems and high-speed rail, making our metropolitan areas more livable and sustainable in the process. ”

“ I have constructed a philosophical engine, designed to perform the duties of the steam-engine, without the aid of water, steam, or fire; which, I feel, ere long, will be brought into general use, and will give another powerful impetus to navigation and inland transit, by removing the stowage of coals and water, and the danger of fire, on board of ships, and the public may expect to see locomotive engines travelling on rail-roads, with a train of carriages, at the speed of from twenty to thirty miles an hour, without the aid of steam or any apparent cause. ”

“ Petrol-driven cars to replace the expensive steam locomotives, easy rapid transit instead of the laborious crawl through the stifling desert heat—a complete railway installation, swiftly and cheaply called into being, instead of a costly and cumbersome makeshift. ”

“ Where there are only two lines of rails to serve for the UP and DOWN service of a heavy passenger and goods traffic, it is imperative to restrict those lines as much as possible to the actual transit of trains, and not to block them by unnecessary occupation for shunting purposes. A goods train running a long distance collects waggons from many roadside stations, and at some of them several waggons will be taken on, to be forwarded to various and widely distant destinations. ”

“ In determining the electrical equipment of the trains, the company has aimed to secure an organization of motors and control apparatus easily adequate to operate trains in both local and express service at the highest speeds compatible with safety to the traveling public. For each of the two classes of service the limiting safe speed is fixed by the distance between stations at which the trains stop, by curves, and by grades. ”

“ America's transportation system is the finest in the world. The web of streets, highways, bridges, and railroads that crisscross our Nation and our complex network of shipping lanes and air routes keep us connected to one another and the world. They enable us to move people and goods swiftly and efficiently across the country and around the globe and fuel the engine of our robust economy. Whether building subways, constructing new highways, or improving airplane safety, the dedicated and hardworking men and women of our national transportation system keep America moving. ”

“ This Report confirms my foregoing opinion, that a steam carriage may be constructed to travel on common roads, with very light loads. But they cannot be made capable of transmitting goods and passengers to any public or private advantage. If the strength of the engine and carriage is increased, the weight must be increased to eight or ten tons, and eight or ten tons would break down the road, on which they are designed to travel.
London, November, 1833 ”

“ Where a system of cheap railways is adopted, there will be year by year a tendency to multiply lines of traffic, and consequently to multiply also ports and seats of trade—a tendency, however, which may be more than neutralized by any special circumstances which may cause the lines of transit to converge rather than run parallel to one another. ”

“ But the best and most intelligible proof which can be given of the groundlessness of this apprehension, is the fact, that for a period of nearly three years, during which travelling and traffic have continued on the railway, and numerous high-pressure engines have been constantly at work upon it, no accident has ever yet occurred from explosion or from any cause depending on the pressure of the steam. ”

“ Lots of people have little or no idea of all the flexible and super-modern modes of public transit that reach all the way toward something called "personal public transit" which would allow you and fellow passengers to call up a monorail car to take you to your destination in some future resurgence of public transit technology.
First, change must replace the dominant highway lobby imagery with sleek public transit imagery. For example, have you ever seen a television advertisement for a new car stuck in congested traffic? ”

“ When it is considered that seven years have now elapsed since the practicability of propelling a carriage on a common road by steam was established by incontestible experiment, it will naturally be enquired, why in a nation celebrated over the world for its mechanical skill and commercial enterprise, and abounding in capital, the project has not yet attained a more advanced stage? ”

“ Now, we shall see hereafter, that when adequate moving powers are applied, even with very considerable weights, the speed attainable, without loss of advantage on roads, bears a large proportion to this. Railroads are contrivances for obtaining a surface for the wheels of carriages to roll upon, smoother than the surface of a turnpike road, whether Macadamised or paved. ”

“ It is subject to undulations and incurvations, which reduce the average rate of speed much more than similar inequalities affect the average rate on common roads. The speed of transport thus attained, is not less wonderful than the weights which this power is capable of transporting. Its capabilities in this respect far transcend the exigencies even of the two greatest commercial marts in Great Britain. Loads, varying from fifty to seventy tons, are transported at the average rate of fifteen miles an hour ”

“ There is, however, one conceivable means of transit that is not simply frequent but continuous, that may be joined or left at any point without a stoppage, that could be adapted to many existing streets at the level or quite easily sunken in tunnels, or elevated above the street level, [11] and that means of transit is the moving platform, whose possibilities have been exhibited to all the world in a sort of mean caricature at the Paris Exhibition. Let us imagine the inner circle of the district railway adapted to this conception. ”

“ The power of traction required on a well-constructed level railway is generally estimated at the 240th part of the load drawn. The smallness of this proportion gives rise to a consequence of great practical importance when inclined planes occur; as must always be the case at points where the level of the country road changes. ”

“ Railways are in progress between the points of great intercourse in the United Kingdoms, and travelling steam-engines are in preparation in every quarter for the common turnpike roads; the practicability and utility of that application of the steam-engine, having not only been established by experiment to the satisfaction of their projectors, but proved before the legislature so conclusively, as to be taken for the foundation of Parliamentary enactments, and upon which large capital may be safely invested. ”

“ The plans adopted provide electric equipment at the outstart capable of operating express trains at an average speed approximating twenty-five miles per hour, while the control system and motor units have been so chosen that higher speeds up to a limit of about thirty miles per hour can be attained by increasing the number of motor cars providing experience in operation demonstrates that such higher speeds can be obtained with safety. ”

“ Wherever traffic is dense and the distance to be traversed not too great, the conditions are already present for the advent of this form of locomotive; and when we recall the rapidity with which city and suburban railways have spread, we can not doubt that once the problems of electric railway engineering are worked out, and the necessary preliminary work of demonstration gone through with, we will witness an equally rapid extension of electric traction to the steam highways of the world. ”