Mode of transportation

“ If we just live long enough, we will have lived in every state in the Union.”
But transportation as we understand it to-day refers to the moving of freight, express, and mail, as well as to the moving of men and women. Man himself was the original burden-bearer and became the first transportation system, carrying combined freight and express. ”

“ In the United States three new methods of transportation made their appearance at almost the same time—the steamboat, the canal boat, and the rail car. ”

“ Importance of roads in the present transportation292 system.—A word of warning may be advisable before we leave this subject to study more recent means of transportation. Not many years ago a French economist estimated that not one twentieth of the settlements of the inhabited world were within less than a day’s distance from a railroad. Even in the most advanced countries the extent of roads far exceeds that of railroads, and only in the rarest cases do products reach the consumer without having traversed a stretch of common road. ”

“ Here is a really great phase of railroad energy. We find our way to a gaunt freight-house, to whose door no truck has ever backed, and which is hemmed in by many rows of sidings and of sheds. In this building one of the busiest functions of the whole transportation business goes forth by day and by night. ”

“ Altogether, forming one continuous system of broad, free highways, the finest the world ever saw! Aided by trains of horseless carriages, there will be developed between the centers along this highway, a new system of transportation, distribution, commerce and exchange. ”

“ The primary objects have therefore been, to sketch briefly and simply the development of the transportation systems of the United States, to indicate their importance and mutual relations, to present some practical methods used in the operation of highway transport and to make occasional suggestions for the betterment of the road as a usable machine for the benefit and pleasure of mankind. ”

“ To have this great transportation machine work smoothly, with the fewest points of obstruction and interruption—the least amount of friction—and with the greatest harmony among all its constituent parts, means, in the long run, the furnishing of the best transportation service to the people of New England. ”

“ Leaving the old world there is sketched all too briefly the development in the United States of transportation facilities from the coastal and natural waterways, from the pack and trail, used by the aborigine and early settlers, through the treks of the pioneers, the periods of canal digging, the toll road competition, and the railway frenzy, to the advent of the modern road with the coming of the bicycle and automobile and their wonderful accelerative impulse. ”

“ The load transported will either be passenger or freight. Passenger traffic may be classified as business or pleasure. If a vehicle is used mostly for business, first cost and economy of operation may play a more important part in the purchase of the car than if used for pleasure, in which case appearance and luxurious appointments may be the deciding factor. ”

“ Passenger transportation obviously has to meet the following needs:—First, carrying people to and from work; second, carrying people about their business during working hours, including shopping; third, carrying people about on social, educational, and recreative objects. ”

“ The inventive mechanic and the engineer, learned or unlearned, have, in the course of the nineteenth century, given to the world the locomotive and our whole system of general continental and transcontinental transportation, the steamship and all our contemporary ocean and river, freight and passenger lines, the automobile and the beginnings of a new and still more widely helpful system of common highway transportation. ”

“ By a study of the transportation—travel, movement of goods and commodities—and the means and facilities for its accomplishment, the relative civilization of any people, their rank and position may be accurately surveyed, graduated, and estimated. The highways of a nation, whether they be of the land or sea, or both, are most vital elements in its progress and could almost as well as transportation be considered the measuring rod of civilization. ”

“ It only remains to be stated that there is regularly established transportation daily between all the principal points, that the distances are not fatiguing, that the charges are reasonable, and the equipment everything that could be desired. ”

“ Of great dynamic forces which have been set to work and are bringing about a complete reconstruction of the social structure, improvements in transportation and communication were the most vital—first, turnpikes, then the steamboat, railroad, and telegraph ”

“ It is not contended that civilization follows the improvement of transportation, although that is no doubt sometimes the case, but that the state of transportation follows up and down with the state of civilization. ”

“ To illustrate this thought, let us assume that a railroad needs one hundred flatcars to carry its peculiar freight and needs one hundred passenger cars for the accommodation of the people. It is self-evident that if the road uses all the flatcars and half the passenger cars to carry its freight, the balance of the passengers will have to make some other provision for transportation or walk. ”

“ The significance of the facilitation of passenger transportation is derived principally from its effects on social conditions, civilization, and customs. One of the most important of these effects is illustrated in emigration, which has assumed grand dimensions under the operation of the new methods of communication. ”

“ Auto-transportation companies, maintaining a mixed service of light passenger cars and the heavier, immense autobuses, have elaborated and organized an ideal system for speed and safety in this unsettled region. ”

“ It is necessary, however, first to ex [Pg 32] plain, for the benefit of those readers of this book who may never have had opportunities to become acquainted with the usages of great cities, that there are two separate systems in use in such cities for the transportation respectively of baggage, and of persons, from place to place. ”

“ Transportation is essential to the development, defense, and enjoyment of our country. Pacing the evolution of our nation, transportation keeps America moving, producing, and growing.
Our earliest settlements flourished on the banks of our river systems-our first avenues of transportation that serve us still. Following trails blazed by the pioneers traveling west, the Interstate Highways remind us of the great strides we have taken in transportation. ”

“ UT—Union Transport, spread the meshes of its transportation service through almost every city of Earth and the hamlets and roads and bus and railroad and airlines between—and even to the few far ports where mankind had found a toehold in space. ”

“ To all the necessities of the wartime effort of the railroads—the enormously increased quantities of freight that had to be moved expeditiously and the transportation of troops—was added a considerable increase in the ordinary passenger traffic. ”

“ He now likes his answers to be in human terms. He takes readily to such conceptions as congestion as the cause for subways and elevated trains; the desire for speed as the cause of change in transportation; the dependence of man on other living things,—all of which I have made the bases of stories. To the children the material in “The Subway Car,” “Speed,” “Silly Will,” is familiar; the relationships in which it appears are new. ”

“ When the necessity arose for more rapid transportation, we tried awhile to breed faster and stronger horses, make better wagons and roads, but we found that did not work, and so we substituted the steam-car and the railroad ”

“ The question of transportation lies at the root of all industrial success, and the revolution in transportation which has taken place during the last half century has been the most important factor in the growth of the new industrial conditions. ”

“ The construction of roads, and in particular of railways, connecting the advanced stations with the coast, and permitting easy access to the inland waters, and to such of the upper courses of the rivers and streams as are broken by rapids and cataracts, with a view to substituting economical and rapid means of transportation for the present system of carriage by men. ”

“ The general rule is that where transportation has acquired an interstate character 'it continues at least until the load reaches the point where the parties originally intended that the movement should finally end.' Ill. ”

“ Capable students of American transportation do not support that view. As Professor Ripley of Harvard has pointed out, if you tried to carry all railway freight by motor-truck, you would have to have a fleet of trucks which would make a solid line, bumper to bumper, all the way from New York to San Francisco ”

“ The degree to which a nation or a community perfects its transportation facilities is an index of its industrial progress and public highways constitute an important element in the national transportation system. ”

“ The term 'transportation' shall include cars and other vehicles and all instrumentalities and facilities of shipment or carriage, irrespective of ownership or of any contract, express or implied, for the use thereof, and all services in connection with the receipt, delivery, elevation, and transfer in transit, ventilation, refrigeration, or icing, storage and handling of property transported ”

“ All the traffic with the interior is carried on by mules, strings of which, laden with panniers or with skins full of oil, jostle the passenger at every turn in the street. It is hardly necessaiy to add that wheeled carriages are unknown. ”

“ Great quantities of money have been spent to make safe river transportation. Elaborate national and international codes of rules for navigation have been adopted. Laws to regulate railways have been passed. The newest form of transportation, aviation, has already been a subject for the law makers’ wisdom. ”

“ Transportation.—A third industry that has its centre in the city but extends across continents and seas is the business of transportation. Manufactured goods are conveyed from the factory to the warehouse and the store, goods sold in the mercantile establishment are delivered from door to door, but enormous quantities of the products [205] of economic activity are hauled to greater distances by truck, car, and steamship. The city is a point to which roads, railways, and steamship lines converge, and from which they radiate in every direction. ”

“ From your experience in Steam Carriages, do you, conceive that it will be necessary to make any alteration of the present roads, such as paving them for the purpose of this mode of conveyance?—No, certainly not; we have found that our vehicles will travel over every kind of road with great velocity, and up the steepest hills ”

“ A very light carriage, sometimes driven by my servant and sometimes by myself, will transport the moderate wardrobe which I shall deem it necessary to take with me to the outermost verge of civilization and good roads, where leaving carriage and wardrobe, or at least all of the latter which may not be borne by a led-horse, I shall penetrate still further into the old forests of this New World. ”

“ In planning his journey to these towns he will have to weigh the relative advantages of three routes, and to consider the opportunities offered by three means of locomotion—railway, steamboat, and post-carriage. ”

“ One thinks of mechanical transport; if not the railway, which, with a single train at its slowest, would whirl along in half-a-day the load which thousands of carriers need six times as long to transport, then of motor lorries, a couple capable of doing in a day work that requires 150 men with head-loads three days. ”

“ These the successive trains carry into the heart of the land everywhere, these and their baggage, to which they continue attached by their very heart-strings, invisibly stretching from their first-class corridor compartments to the different luggage-vans. ”

“ To transportation of persons over a route wholly or partly within a national park or state park where such transportation is sold in conjunction with or as part of a rail trip or trip over a regularly operated motor bus transportation system or line; ' (6) To the transportation of passengers by a person who is driving his own vehicle and the transportation of persons other than himself and members of his family when transporting such persons to or from their place of employment and when the owner of such vehicle is driving to or from his place of employment ”

“ The whole history of transport shows constant change and progress, the achievements of one generation or the "records" of one pioneer being only the starting-point of fresh advance or of still greater triumphs later on. ”

“ No other train, engine or vehicle, except passenger trains, was permitted to travel on the other track between the passing of the pilot and the royal train, and even passenger trains had to slow down to ten miles per hour. ”

“ By contrast, have you ever seen an ad for public transit showing people zooming to work in a modern transit train, while they were snoozing, chatting or reading the newspaper, and racing ahead of a parallel highway clogged with trucks, vans and cars moving in slow motion? ”

“ Just behind the great hissing locomotive, with its parabolic headlight and its coal-laden tender, came the baggage, mail, and express cars; then the passenger coaches, in which the social condition of the occupants seemed to be in inverse ratio to their distance from the engine. ”

“ Commuters and truck-wagons ain’t any sweet haulin’, but I tell you they’re a heap better ’n cuttin’ out refrigerator-cars or oil-tanks. Why, I’ve hauled—”
“Haul! You?” said the Mogul, contemptuously. “It’s all you can do to bunt a cold-storage car up the yard. Now, I—” he paused a little to let the words sink in—“I handle the Flying Freight—e-leven cars worth just anything you please to mention. On the stroke of eleven I pull out; and I’m timed for thirty-five an hour. Costly-perishable-fragile, immediate—that’s me! Suburban traffic’s only but one degree better than switching. ”